ASUS P4PE i845PE Based Mainboard

i845PE chipset

The latest products of this company based on the high-performance chipsets support almost all innovative technologies apart from good accessories. This model is almost a full copy of the ASUS P4GE-V, but for the fact that the 2nd serial port is located on the rear panel which is typical of all boards on discrete chipsets.

Accessories:

Package of the standard design;
Documentation: user manual in English and brief installation manual in 11 languages;
Cables: FDD, 2 Serial ATA, 1 ATA66/100/133, 1 ATA33;
Bracket with 2 USB and Game ports;
Bracket for the rear computer panel;
CD containing:

drivers;
DirectX 8.1;
Adobe Acrobat Reader;
PC-Cillin 2002;
3Deep;
Winbond Voice Editor;
ASUS Live Update;
ASUS HotKey;
ASUS Logo;
ASUS PCProbe;
ASUS Screensaver.

The layout has typical drawbacks: audio-ins and connectors along the left side of the board are not easy to reach and when a video card is installed it's difficult to handle the memory modules. It's not difficult to reach jumpers when the board is already installed. Their functions are not shown on the textolite.

The 3-channel switching voltage regulator incorporates 6 capacitors of 1500 uF and 3 of 1200 uF.

The following controllers are integrated:

audio controller based on the chipset's capabilities and Analog Devices AD1980 AC'97 codec supporting 5.1 audio systems and having connectors for front audio inputs/outputs and for SPDIF;

network controller based on the Broadcom BCM5702CKFB chip supporting 10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T;

IDE RAID controller based on the Promise PDC20376 chip supporting RAID 0 and 1 on the ATA133 and SATA protocols;

FireWire bus controller based on the VIA VT6307 chip.

The board incorporates ASUS Multi-Language BIOS, ASUS POST Reporter (reports about problems during booting), ASUS MyLogo2 (for displaying your images when the system boots),ASUS EZ Plug (allows using a power unit which doesn't comply with the ATX 2.03 standard), ASUS Q-Fan (auto fan speed control) and ASUS EZ Flash.

+5 V supplied in the StandBy mode is indicated with the green LED, and when a 3.3V card is inserted into the AGP slot you will see the red LED going on which means that the card is incompatible (it's impossible to turn on the computer even with the Power button).

The system monitoring is supported by the ASUS ASB100 Bach chip. What is controlled:

processor voltage, +3.3, +5 and +12 V;
speed of 3 fans;
temperatures of the processor (a built-in sensor), the board (a built-in sensor) and an external sensor connected to the board.

There are 3 connectors for adjustable connection of fans.

Brief characteristics of the board: memory slots - 3 DDR SDRAM; expansion slots - AGP/ 6 PCI; I/O ports - 2 COM/ LPT/ 2 PS/2/ 6 USB 2.0 / 2 FireWire; dimensions - 305x230 mm.

Adjustment can be carried out with:

jumpers and switches	Jumper to clear up the CMOS
	Jumper for starting up computer from a PS/2 keyboard
	Jumper for starting up computer from USB keyboard
BIOS based on Award 6.00	Setup of memory timings	+	CAS Latency, RAS to CAS Delay, RAS Precharge Delay, Active Precharge Delay, Idle timer, Burst Length, Memory Turbo Mode
	Setup of memory frequency	+	Auto, CPU:DRAM = 1:1, 4:5, 3:4
	Setup of AGP bus	+
	Setup of PCI bus	+
	Changeable scaler of AGP and PCI buses	+	AGP(PCIx2) = 66.66-104.46 MHz in 0.4-0.6MHz steps
	Manual assignment of interrupts	+
	Changeable FSB frequency	+	100-200 MHz in 1MHz steps
	Changeable CPU multiplier	+	x8-x24
	Changeable core voltage	+	1.5-1.85V in 0.025 V steps
	Changeable memory voltage	+	Auto, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.9 V
	Changeable chipset voltage	-
	Changeable AGP bus voltage	+	Auto, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 V

We used the BIOS 1001 as the latest available version.

Well, its advantages and strong points are evident but let's wait until all the boards are examined.

Test results:

Dmitry Mayorov (destrax@ixbt.com)

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