Thursday, June 20, 2002

Introduction

The Asus P4T533-C is the first PC1066 DRDRAM-ready motherboard we've recieved for testing. That distinction comes despite the fact that the i850E chipset does not officially support PC1066 memory, but that small detail doesn't seem to have stopped Asus. By simply tweaking a few setting, and waxing a few circuits, Asus' engineers succeeded in getting the i850E to play nicely with PC1066 DRDRAM. Our readers may remember that AOpen worked some similar mojo on their AX4G Pro in order to get its i845G chipset to work with DDR333 modules. Take a look at the "Configuration" chapter for more detail.

The Asus P4T533-C is a Pentium 4-compatible mobo that supports FSBs of either 400MHz or 533MHz.

As for ports, the P4T533-C comes not only with USB 1.1 ports, but also USB 2.0, and a 10/100Base-T Ethernet port. This puts it in roughly the same league as the Abit IT7, with the substantial difference that the P4T533-C conserves its legacy PS2 and parallel connectors.

While it doesn't come with a LED diagnostic panel, the P4T533-C isn't totally deprived in the diagnostic department either. In fact, it comes equipped with the "Post Reporter" system, which works by providing users with vocal diagnostic messages following any start-up anomalies.

Another of the P4T533-C's interesting characteristics is its "Q-Fan" technology, which can regulate the speed of the CPU fan in response to changes in temperature, thereby reducing unneccessary noise.

And, of course, no motherboard would be complete these days without a 6-channel sound-card, and the P4T533-C is nothing if not complete.

So, with all that said, let's take a closer look, shall we?

Audio

The Asus P4T533-C's audio circuitry is based around a Realtek ALC650 sound-chip. The ALC650 supports AC3, and 5.1 Surround Sound, and allows users to hook-in up to six audio channels, including a center base channel. Using the ALC650 is actually a bit of a change for Asus. They have traditionally opted to use the C-Media CMI 8738 in their motherboards, and this actually represents a step back in terms of performance because the C-Media CMI 8738 integrated soundcard is only available as an option.

From a fidelity standpoint, though, the Realtek AL650 is quite good at what it does, and should satisfy most users.

An optical SPDIF out connector and an RCA out connector are included on a sepaerate bracket.

Configuration

Configuration of the Asus P4T333-C is a bit more complicated than most boards due to the multitude of on-board jumpers and Dip switches.

In this case, an entire array of Dips and jumpers are dedicated to the purpose of Overclocking the FSB frequency, altering the Vcore voltage, and simply switch the system from being jumper-oriented to BIOS-oriented.

If users peek inside the "Advanced" BIOS menu, they will be presented with a series of Overclocking functions, but, there are strangely fewer than usual. By all appearances, Asus seems to have given P4T533-C less latitude with system settings than has typically been the case in the past.

For example, while the FSB frequency can be changed, it can't be incremented in 1MHz steps. Instead, users are limited to selecting pre-chosen frequencies, as indicated in the table above.

The clock multiplier, however, is flexible, and can be set to between 12X and 24X.

The Vcore voltage is adjustable as well, and can be set to any value indicated in our table, but, unfortunately, such flexibility has not been extended to the DDR, AGP, or Vio voltage settings.

Finally, we found a remarkable lack of memory timing features but this lack of memory tweak settings are commonly part of Direct RDRAM systems. In fact, the only memory function we found gave us the option to set the memory:FSB ratio to either 3X to use PC800 memory, or 4X to use PC1066.

Next: Technical details.

Asus p4t533-c