Asus P4C800-E - beginner needs help

[halcyon]

I'm considering this board to upgrade from my current setup.

I need to know how many PATA drives I can connect to this board WITHOUT using SATA converters and WITHOUT using PATA-RAID controllers.

This is important, because neither SATA-PATA converters nor PATA RAID controllers fully support ATAPI devices, which I have four of (I have four burners, all of which must work on standard compliant parallel ata ports, not Promise RAID or serial ata ports).

So, does this board have four fully standard ATAPI/MMC compliant parallel ata connectors (that is two channels with master and slave each)?

Also, I know this is somewhat controversial issue, but does anybody have any accurate information on which Prescott speeds the board will support?

Asus claims support up to 3.2 GHz CPUs and also claims Prescott support in their web pages.

However, this does not AFAIK guarantee that the board will support Prescott versions up to the (presumably) last socket 478 Prescott at 3.8GHz.

Anybody have any inside information on this?

As a last point, can I disable all of the integrated doodah in the BIOS? Including USB ports (if they use more than 1 IRQ), Firewire, PATA RAID, audio, etc?

I know of ACPI/APIC, but this needs to perform audio duties as well and I may have to go the old non-apic route on this board.

I'd really appreciate all help on the issues.

cheers,
Halcyon

[halcyon]

Nobody knows?

Please chime in if you know answers to any of the questions above.

thanks!

[Hawk]

Originally posted by halcyon
I'm considering this board to upgrade from my current setup.

I need to know how many PATA drives I can connect to this board WITHOUT using SATA converters and WITHOUT using PATA-RAID controllers.


(Total is 6. 2 primary, 2 seconday, 2 on the IDE RAID)

This is important, because neither SATA-PATA converters nor PATA RAID controllers fully support ATAPI devices, which I have four of (I have four burners, all of which must work on standard compliant parallel ata ports, not Promise RAID or serial ata ports).

So, does this board have four fully standard ATAPI/MMC compliant parallel ata connectors (that is two channels with master and slave each)?


(Yes, Primary & Secondary)

Also, I know this is somewhat controversial issue, but does anybody have any accurate information on which Prescott speeds the board will support?



(It should, but no one has one to test with yet.)

Asus claims support up to 3.2 GHz CPUs and also claims Prescott support in their web pages.

However, this does not AFAIK guarantee that the board will support Prescott versions up to the (presumably) last socket 478 Prescott at 3.8GHz.

Anybody have any inside information on this?

As a last point, can I disable all of the integrated doodah in the BIOS? Including USB ports (if they use more than 1 IRQ), Firewire, PATA RAID, audio, etc?


(yes, Disable anything that you are not using)

I know of ACPI/APIC, but this needs to perform audio duties as well and I may have to go the old non-apic route on this board.

I'd really appreciate all help on the issues.

cheers,
Halcyon

[halcyon]

Thank you very much!

cheers,
Halcyon

[robc]

Hi All,

I've been building (personal) systems for years but have never been hardcore about it (e.g. no overclocking). I recently purchased the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard and am a little out of my league with some of the newer (to me) technologies in it (SATA, RAID).

I'm replying to a message which asks the same question I have - can I run 2 DVD/CD ROMs and 4 IDE HDs (I guess these would be PATA drives?) on the mobo. The answer clearly is yes, which is great.

The problem is, I can't get it to work.

Here's what I've got:

DVD-Writer
CD-Writer
IDE HD1
IDE HD2
IDE HD3 (> 137GB)
IDE HD4 (> 137GB)

Getting the first four devices working is simple (old school). I've got HD1/HD2 as primary/slave on the main PRI_IDE connector. I've got the DVD/CD as primary/slave on the SEC_IDE connector. I'm booting off HD1.

The problem is - how to install, set the BIOS, and the OS (WinXP Pro) to get HD3/HD4 up.

I've tried connecting HD3/HD3 as primary/slave on the third IDE-looking connector (sorry for my pathetic lack of knowledge here, but I'm not even sure what to call it - I can't tell my SouthBridge from my Promise controller and I don't have the manual or board with me right now, :shhh: ).

I've tried disabling RAID in the BIOS and setting it to use either PATA or SATA+PATA.

Any help? If there's more info I can add to make my question clearer - just let me know.

Thanks,
Rob.

[tomvill]

Well I'm running a 3.4C on a Asus P4C 800 deluxe-E and have had no problems.. I,ve noticed as the revisions go up so has the # of power mosfets supporting power to the cpu. My revision 2 has added several mosfets to power the cpu.. This seems a little weird because I also have another revision 2 board here that is minus a couple of mosfets. I would say that if you can get the latest board then you have it made there should be 4 power mosfets in the top right corner of the cpu socket and 3 on the left if it,s the latest board. I would post pics but I cann,t get the files that small to post.I suspect that asus added these so the board can supply adequate power to latter versions of the prescott without the board burning out when overclocked.

[Vflux]

Tomvill,

I got the same mobo description you're trying to point out. Compared it to my dead P4C800-E DX board and they added mosfets to the location where the older revisions didnt have. BTW this new Rev2 boards have more stable vcore and it's not scattered to where it set at bios. With the addition of my droop mod. It rocks like no other.

[tomvill]

I think what they did is take a very good board and made it better. It should with those added mosfets run the board a little cooler and be able to better keep up with overclocking and the higher ghz prescotts comming out.

[joeWI]

Rob,

HD3 and HD4 would have to be connected to the VIA RAID controller which has 2 PATA/IDE connections which supports a total of 4 drives. In your case, you would be connecting both drives to the PATA connections. One connection is located across from PCI slot number 4. The other connection is actually further over on the edge of the motherboard. You need to pay attention to master/slave settings and which cable connector you use.

You will need to activate the VIA RAID controller in the BIOS, located under Advanced | Onboard Device Configuration. Refer to page 4-21 in the user manual.

This is not to be confused with the Intel SATA RAID controller, located under Main | IDE Configuration, which not only controls the 2-SATA connections but also your primary and secondary ATA/IDE connections. If you want to deactive the SATA connections, you could set this one to PATA only.

When the computer boots, you should see the VIA RAID controller initializing and list the physical drives that are attached to it. If you wish to use raid, hit TAB to go into the VIA utility. If you wish to use the drives as normal drives, there is nothing you need to do in the utility.

You will need to install the VIA RAID drivers in Windows XP so have a disk ready with the drivers on it. When Windows XP boots, it should detect the new device and prompt you for the drivers.

The drives should now be available in Windows. If you wish to assign different drive letters, use Start | Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management. Click on Storage | Disk Management. Right click on the drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Hope this helps,
Joe