Monday, June 23, 2003

Well, here it is!
It is with great pleasure that I present this article to you but,
unfortunately, with a little delay. However, given the circumstances I told you about a while ago, this is very understandable. So, now, we are continuing our site just where we had left off!

Introduction

In the last Asus products, the P4G8X represents the finest in INTEL Hyper-Threading socket 478 technology for Pentium 4 processors.

In a former article, we tested and showed the advantages of Hyper-Threading technology of INTEL founder. Nevertheless, it is necessary to have a good support to give it justice, namely P4G8X. As we mentioned, this new generation of processors INTEL has a complete copy of architecture for each logical processor and shares a single whole of execution resources. So, in short, applications using several threads (execution tasks) within the same process sees itself advantaged by this technology which, combined to the memory in Dual Channel gives performances that are all the more impressive.

Asus P4G8X offers all the range of the new functionalities which include Serial ATA, 1 10/100 network port or Gigabit which offers 10 times the rate of transfer of the 10/100 conventional one, memory PC2100 in Dual Channel up to 4 Gig, ATA100, its digital Dolby, the support of the AGP with 8x and Firewire IEEE1394. The BIOS also allows to the users of Overclocker the system to tap all the power of the processor. Of course, there are also adjustments for the tensions for Vcore, Dimm and AGP in the BIOS. It should be noted that some of these functionalities are optional in the standard version and included in the luxury version.


Finally, Asus P4G8X still also comprises the devices unique to ASUS such as ASUS C.P.R., Q-fan, EZ flash, CrashFree BIOS, ASUSPost Reporter and MyLogo2 in order to ensure what is best as regard to motherboard. Finally the blue PCI connector which accommodates Asustek's SpaceLink B&W WLAN board(wireless local area network), supporting the 802.11a and 802.11b standards like Bluetooth. Welcome! Wireless communication!

Audio

Asus P4G8X audio circuits are based on the Realtek AL650 chip. This chip supports AC3 and 5.1 Sound Surround configurations and allows the connection of 6 audio exits of which a center lane for low frequencies.

Configuration

ASUS P4G8X does not contain any jumper which we can use to configure either the FSB, the clock, or Vcore to name only these ones. Everything is carried out from Bios. Welcome into the JumperLess world!

In short, all the configuration occurs within BIOS which, for my part, is much easier. Starting from Advanced Chipset Setup menu, one can change the FSB of the processor in a choice of frequencies from 100Mhz to 211Mhz into steps of 1Mhz or let the automatic detection do its work.

BIOS also enables us to select the frequency ratio of the AGP/PCI bus, the Vcore tension of the CPU (1.5 to 1.975 Volts), the DDR tension (2.5 to 2.7 Volts) as well as the AGP tension (1.5 to 1.7 Volts). The memory adjustment are "by SPD" (serial presence detect) or with the usualy one that are CAS latency, RAS to CAS delay, RAS precharge delay, active precharge delay and idle Timer.

Also note that the Hyper-Threading option is available only if a P4 processor supporting the hyper-Threading is installed.

A significant point here concerns the choice of the operating system. INTEL recommends only Windows XP Pro and Windows Home version. INTEL now works with the Linux community in order to include the necessities into Kernel in order to support Hyper-Threading.
See "Intel OS choice"

Next: Technical details.

Asus P4S8X