Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

My computer system is a P4 3.0 Prescott, Asus P4P800S, 1G RAM,
PFUHL2keyboard, Geforce4Ti4800SE, Creative CDRW 32x, Sony DVDROM, Mirage
400W powersupply, IntelliExplorer mouse. Cable modem - Motorola SB5100.

I am using Windows XP Pro SP1 with all critical updates done (one by
one) Firewall is Zone Alarm Pro 5.1, Grisoft AVG. I also use Trojan Hunter,
Adware6, and TrendMicro's online scanner.

Is the Asus P4P800S motherboard more than satisfactory or should I get the
deluxe versions?

Cheers,

Castle

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Hi,

If you want to stay with Intel P4, then there is no advantage in swapping
motherboards.

To make it worth while, a performance increase of at least 25% is needed.
Personally, I wouldn't bother unless the performance increase were well over
50% if not 100% - its not worth the cost or effort. People often do
"trivial" upgrades and are quite disappointed.

If all other parameters remain the same then swapping motherboards is
unlikely to give more than 5%, and of that 5% a large part will be due to
sneaked in overclocking by the mother board manufacturer. You always have
the option to overclock, but unless you have purchased components for
overclocking you are unlikely to see any gain worth the effort (IE 10% max
for stock componentry, over 25% is achievable with hand picked parts).

You have two options if you wish to upgrade and cost is no barrier: Intel
Xeon, or AMD 64bit. There are some new Xeon chips out with matching new
motherboards which will give a good memory bandwidth boost (some gain) and
smaller CPU performance gains (from not much to some - the new Xeon is based
on the existing P4 core). Currently I do not see any worthwhile CPU upgrades
coming from Intel for a person with a P4 3GHz already - and do not see any
likely this year. IE if they hit 4GHz this year that is only a 33% increase
so is marginal in its worth for you. Things have never been so slow to
change on the CPU front.

With the AMD's you will see (reportedly) about a 20% performance gain by
going to a matching 64bit chip and still running 32bit Windows (IE a 3000 PR
rated chip). You can always go to the higher bandwidth FX and Opteron chips
and also consider dual processors (real duals, not HT).

A dual Opteron 250 system will set you back quite a bit, but would be a
worthwhile upgrade if you concurrently run a lot of software and often have
long running tasks / server systems and wish to continue other work
unimpeded. However personally, I would still wait a while for some price
drops and better CPU performance gains.

The performance gains depend very much on the type of applications you run:
if it is games, then an upgrade to your graphics card alone (now) will be
worthwhile. If you have systems that are CPU intensive then my comments
stand. Other systems are IO intensive (E.G. database centric systems can be
if the system has too little memory), software development can be... so
upgrading your disc storage system to use E.G. a caching RAID controller
will help. Performance gains from standard SATA RAID 0 (and 1) are largely
theoretical (a common exception is video editing) as in practice most
applications do not impose a suitable workload to benefit from this as much
as people wish to perceive - the only common exception is Windows XP boot.

HTH
- Tim



"TheRedSunRiseth" <removethesun_crimson_castle@hotmail.com> wrote in message
newsLOXc.10193$D7.10034@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>
> My computer system is a P4 3.0 Prescott, Asus P4P800S, 1G RAM,
> PFUHL2keyboard, Geforce4Ti4800SE, Creative CDRW 32x, Sony DVDROM, Mirage
> 400W powersupply, IntelliExplorer mouse. Cable modem - Motorola SB5100.
>
> I am using Windows XP Pro SP1 with all critical updates done (one by
> one) Firewall is Zone Alarm Pro 5.1, Grisoft AVG. I also use Trojan
> Hunter,
> Adware6, and TrendMicro's online scanner.
>
> Is the Asus P4P800S motherboard more than satisfactory or should I get the
> deluxe versions?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Castle
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Thanks Tim,

Your message was very well thought out and made a lot of sense!

Thank you very much! But what do you mean with your last sentense?

Warmest Regards,

Bessie.


> as people wish to perceive - the only common exception is Windows XP boot.
>
> HTH
> - Tim
>
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Unforetunately some of it was not true. Tim is an idiot and should not be
lisened to.



"TheRedSunRiseth" <removethesun_crimson_castle@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ESTXc.10579$D7.7657@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Thanks Tim,
>
> Your message was very well thought out and made a lot of sense!
>
> Thank you very much! But what do you mean with your last sentense?
>
> Warmest Regards,
>
> Bessie.
>
>
>> as people wish to perceive - the only common exception is Windows XP
>> boot.
>>
>> HTH
>> - Tim
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Thanks Pete D - your contribution was most helpful to me, the newsgroup, and
also to yourself no doubt. If you don't like my answer, you can always
complain to abuse@bigpond.net.au.

What did I mean about RAID 0 / 1 performance?

Quite simply that unless you are using applications that are IO intensive EG
video editing, you will not see most of the performance benefit from RAID 0
that is possible. The observable exception is Windows XP boot where RAID 0
systems do contribute to the process as it has an IO pattern that can
benefit from RAID.

There are benefits in RAID1 (data resilience) regardless, but in most
situations, there are few if any benefits after the risk of RAID 0 since
loss of either disc = loss of all data.

- Tim



"TheRedSunRiseth" <removethesun_crimson_castle@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ESTXc.10579$D7.7657@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Thanks Tim,
>
> Your message was very well thought out and made a lot of sense!
>
> Thank you very much! But what do you mean with your last sentense?
>
> Warmest Regards,
>
> Bessie.
>
>
>> as people wish to perceive - the only common exception is Windows XP
>> boot.
>>
>> HTH
>> - Tim
>>
>>
>>
>
>