Asus P4C800 Deluxe

jrg70

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 23, 2004
Messages
84
What's the difference between the P4C800 Deluxe and the P4C800-E Deluxe?

I've looked at the specs and I can't see what's different.

Thanks
 
The difference between the two is in the ICH. The non-"E" version of the P4C800 Deluxe uses the ICH5, which doesn't support RAID in its native SATA channels. The "E" version, the P4C800-E Deluxe, uses the ICH5R, which supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 in its native SATA channels. However, Intel's RAID drivers and functionality require Windows 2000 or Windows XP; Intel's RAID implementation doesn't support Windows 9x or Windows Me. Both versions of that ICH include two SATA ports and two PATA/100 ports.

Both motherboards come with Promise's SATA RAID chip (which is really a PATA controller chip with a nearby converter chip for SATA support). That chip supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and "RAID 10" - and the RAID functionality of that chipset is compatible with Windows 98SE or later. And two additional SATA ports and one PATA/133 port are associated with this Promise chip.
 
E4g1e said:
The difference between the two is in the ICH. The non-"E" version of the P4C800 Deluxe uses the ICH5, which doesn't support RAID in its native SATA channels. The "E" version, the P4C800-E Deluxe, uses the ICH5R, which supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 in its native SATA channels. However, Intel's RAID drivers and functionality require Windows 2000 or Windows XP; Intel's RAID implementation doesn't support Windows 9x or Windows Me. Both versions of that ICH include two SATA ports and two PATA/100 ports.

Both motherboards come with Promise's SATA RAID chip (which is really a PATA controller chip with a nearby converter chip for SATA support). That chip supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and "RAID 10" - and the RAID functionality of that chipset is compatible with Windows 98SE or later. And two additional SATA ports and one PATA/133 port are associated with this Promise chip.

Also, the E supports Intel PRO/1000CT networking natively, via the same ICH5R southbridge that the 800 Deluxe lacks. Further, from personal experience, if I were going to run a RAID configuration, the absolute *last* OSes I would use would be the DOS-based 98 SE or ME. If you are going to run RAID, Team NT (not only Windows 2000 or XP, but even NT 4.0) are a lot more stable than 9x; further, what do you *really* give up running Windows 2000 or XP (or NTFS for that matter)?

When Windows 2000 shipped, I crossgraded from 98 SE, and the loss was *nil*.

You heard right. I lost *nothing*.

I can run every game I could under 98 SE under Windows 2000 (or XP); and some games (notably, Unreal Tournament and C&C: RA2) run even *better* under 2000 (or XP) than 9x.

All that makes recommending Windows 2000 or XP the easiest recommendation I have ever done.
 
PGHammer said:
Also, the E supports Intel PRO/1000CT networking natively, via the same ICH5R southbridge that the 800 Deluxe lacks.
This is correct. However, the Gigabit support on the plain (non-E) P4C800 Deluxe comes from an onboard Marvell 8001 chipset that's connected to the 32-bit/33MHz PCI bus. That eats up more resources than the native Intel Gigabit solution would have. :(
 
E4g1e said:
This is correct. However, the Gigabit support on the plain (non-E) P4C800 Deluxe comes from an onboard Marvell 8001 chipset that's connected to the 32-bit/33MHz PCI bus. That eats up more resources than the native Intel Gigabit solution would have. :(

That is *exactly* why I bought the E.

The E uses fewer system resources and also has lower latency than the non-E counterpart.
 
E4g1e said:
This is correct. However, the Gigabit support on the plain (non-E) P4C800 Deluxe comes from an onboard Marvell 8001 chipset that's connected to the 32-bit/33MHz PCI bus. That eats up more resources than the native Intel Gigabit solution would have. :(

Which is why I bought a PCI nic and didn't even use the onboard. Unfortunately I bought the non-E before the E was available so I am stuck. But a great board overall.
 
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