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I had independently come to the conclusion that one of the many asus p4.... series would be the one to go for, and then I saw quite a few of you guys using/talking about them and thought great, I'll settle for that! I just hope you aren't bored of talking about them yet!
Now trying to finalise the choice, I can't figure the difference between the p4p800 and p4p800se except the p4p800 seems to have a lot more bios updates on asus site!? Is that just because the se (second edition?) has a better bios to start with? For example, is raid 1 enable on the se - it seems to be mentioned in one of the bios updates for the non-se version.

Thanks for your input...

afaik, the model with the fewest extras that you can live with is the best choice.
i doubt if raid will be nessessary/useful.....

yeah, I've been looking at the basic 865 chipset models after reading other posts here. Interested in raid because I know of too many hdd dying, and I'm hopeless at backing up regularly! Been flicking through the manuals this lunch time and can answer that bit of my question - 'se' version says it can do it, if i believe what i read Guess i could always put a pci card in anyway. The other difference I have spotted is it has marvel rather than 3com lan chipset, not that that is of any consiquence to me...

Anyhow, if you know of any other differences (or experiences with them) i'd like to know

cheers, dan

inteld865perl. cheap and effective. forget the raid.

On 2004-10-13 08:48, djfc100 wrote:
...Interested in raid because I know of too many hdd dying, and I'm hopeless at backing up regularly! ...

right, and raid won't save your day
the dying disks are intended by their makers, to make you buy a new one - and hell, are they cheap... if they don't earn enough on one, they must sell two or more.

One of the reasons for the wearout is heat.
The usual position of the drive has close to no airflow - hence it WILL overheat.

Why do you think are drive surfaces not completely plane ?
It could be too easy to apply a heat dissipating device then

There are warnings about almost anything in a PC, why not the drives temperature ?
Why doesn't the drive spin slower under critical conditions ?

we have to live with that situation and a good backup tool to a 2nd disk - any suggestions, btw ?
I'm probably going to buy another half a dozen 5200 rpm drives, as long as they are still on supply...

cheers, Tom

On 2004-10-13 19:23, astroman wrote:
One of the reasons for the wearout is heat.
The usual position of the drive has close to no airflow - hence it WILL overheat.

You're absoluteley right! had one dead drive last spring, which made me buy a new case (and yes, a new drive as well). In this new case the drives are in the bottom front, just behind a 12cm intake fan. Just behind the CPU is a big 12cm outlet fan, so there actually IS airflow. Temps went down by 15 degr. celsius!
oops , getting off topic. sorry bout that
BTW I'm using a P4C800e dlx. It has intel raid and promise raid. I disabled the promise-RAID and I configured my two data-disks (SATA) in RAID-0, which has a very positive effect on the throughput. (lots of VDAT channels!). ALso a great way to get rid of my single-point-of-failure... I now have a double point of failure
Cheers,
Rob

Good one.

I have the same board but different approach. I'm running a MIRROR on the Promise controller.

I tend to build systems now with RAID-1, two identical hard drives. Since hardly anyone I know is any good at backups, including me, I really think it is better than nothing. Disk is cheap.

Other approaches are GHOST or Disk Copy, etc. Which is an approach I have done also, with "PowerSync" software. Odd, but that works fairly well. Doesn't get you bootable after the main disk crashes though.

I think the ICH5-R and the Promise MIRROR solutions are both quite good though.

Thanks for the replys, the main question still is whether anybody has used both of these boards to know what the difference is!

Besides the 3Com v. Marvel network controllers, this was the only feature I noticed in the specs:

ASUS Hyper Path Technology
ASUS Hyper Path, a unique technology for the ASUS P4P800 series, optimizes the true potential of the Intel 865PE chipset to deliver the highest performance amongst competing 856PE-based solutions. All P4P800 Series PCB and BIOS versions support Hyper Path.

Now... I would have thought that this was as they suggest a BIOS correctable addition... But I'm not sure. I believe this is the setting that makes an 865PE perform like the 875P does. Maybe +5% but no more than that, if memory serves me.

Anyway, I would probably just go with the newer one as these companies tend to do minor fixes in layout, and put newer bioses on the most recent products.

Hi,

if you go for the p4p800 you want to make dead sure it has the 865 chipset as opposed to the cheaper and less good 848 - I'm sure I found the se's to have that one.

In the end I have opted for an intel d865perl although I haven't got it installed yet so can't give any feedback (it's very cheap too - in the uk http://www.ebuyer.co.uk at £50odd).

It has RAID sockets too if you want them (i think ... better check ... I'm not going for a raid setup - too much hassle)

Hope this helps,

Will.