articles
FORUMS!
links
contact

PC Database

Folding Team

SETI@HOME Team
RC5 Team
Genome Team

OCAU chat

The P3C range is Asus's line of motherboards based upon Intel's new i820 chipset. Of the 6 models in this range, the P3C2000 is unique in that it takes SDRAM instead of the RAMBUS memory more commonly associated with the i820. This in theory removes the major barrier to entry for people wanting the benefits of i820. For example, at the moment I don't know of anyone selling Rambus RIMM's in Australia, but you can buy i820 boards such as the AOpen AX6C from a number of online stores. You could order some RIMM's from the US if you liked but they are mind-numbingly expensive with dubious performance advantages over PC133 SDRAM. In order to use SDRAM with the i820 the Intel 82805AA Memory Translator Hub needs to be built into the motherboard. This is exactly what it sounds like, an extra component in the memory stream that converts RAMBUS-type instructions from the chipset into SDRAM-type instructions for the memory controller. It has been widely speculated that this would cause a serious performance hit. You can see if this is true in the benchmarks later in this article.

So what are the benefits of i820 anyway? Well, as seen on this board you get UDMA/66 support on all IDE ports, an AGP Pro slot (supporting AGP 4X), Intel's Random Number Generator which should improve security through encryption and digital signing etc and native 133MHz FSB support for Coppermine processors etc. For a full list of specs of the board see Asus's page here. You would also hope the chipset would be generally faster than it's predecessor, the ever-present i440BX, but, again, we will have to wait until the benchmarks to see if that's true.

Installation
The first thing that struck me about the board itself is the huge size. It is in relation to this that I discovered the first major problem with the board. It manages to be one of the widest ATX boards I've ever seen and yet be one of the most restrictive for space in front of the Slot1 connector. Indeed, I couldn't get ANY aftermarket P2 coolers to fit on the unit due to 3 tall capacitors, badly placed in front of the slot. I tried GlobalWin's VEK-32, Vantek's K7D-5030 and a couple of RDJD units - all rest on the capacitors strongly enough to stop you getting the P2 into the Slot1.

3 tall capacitors block deep heatsinks..

Asus have also made the classic power-supply-plug placement blunder - sadly it seems they didn't learn anything from the K7M in that regard. This stops you using an FDP-32 on a slocket as the fan juts over the power supply connector. So, finally, the only CPU+HSF combination I could get working on this board was a socket370 Celeron with a SuperDual cooler on it. Obviously most people who buy this board will be using P3's, and if you stick with the retail cooler you should have no space issues. An Alpha is out of the question however.

and a badly placed power plug blocks tall ones..

This brings up another interesting thing about the board. The lowest FSB speed it supports is 100MHz. So unless you're getting into active cooling, the highest Celeron you should think about using is a C400 that you know is stable at 600MHz. Again, this board is designed around the P3 but it would've been nice to have a little more backwards-compatability for the Celeron users. The maximum FSB is a blistering 180MHz.