Friendly Expert Computer Help - In Plain English
PC911
As Seen On TechTV
 
Google
 
PC911 > Reviews > Hardware > Asus P3V4X Motherboard

Asus P3V4X Motherboard

URL: http://www.asus.com/Products/Motherboard/Pentiumpro/P3v4x/index.html

Check Prices On This Product

E-mail this article to a friend

Rating: Excellent!

Review:

Recently, my brother decided it was time for a computer upgrade, (his 133 Pentium doesn't really cut it anymore). I decided to give him my Asus P2B-S MB with PIII 600 Katmai processor and buy my self a new setup. I picked the Asus P3V4X for a few reasons. I am an overclocker and I like the soft bios and the vast assortment of clock settings offered by the Asus board,(more than the comparible Abit board). Along with the board I purchased a 650e Coppermine and 256 PC133 Siemens.

I usually do a clean install of Win98 when changing a MB, but this system has so much software and custom tweaks that I decided to try and avoid that this time. If it gave me any trouble at all, I wasn't going to spend a lot of time diagnosing it, but format and start over. I booted to safe mode and deleted the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum key. That cleaned everything out of the Device Manager.

I installed the new parts and booted at 650mhz to make sure everything worked correctly. The system booted immediately, and after a few reboots it had located and reinstalled all the hardware. This consists of four U2LVD SCSI hard drives, a SCSI burner, a SCSI CD-ROM, an IDE DVD, a SCSI scanner, an ATI TV Wonder, a Digital Origin Firewire card, two printers, a compact flash reader, a zip drive, a Geforce 2, an Adaptec 2940U2W controller and a SB Live soundcard. Everything worked perfectly, so I decided to see how high it would clock.

I set the processor settings to manual in the bios and set it to 6.5x140. It booted immediately at that setting showing a processor speed of 910. The system seemed totally stable at that speed, so I started stressing it some. I started up 3D Mark 2000 & ran it through once. It ran fine and almost doubled my old results!! I then set it to loop and ran 3D Mark for four hours with no problem. I then ran the Unreal Flyby for another four hours with no lockups. I think I could probably clock it even higher, but I don't think my Adaptec controller would like the higher PCI bus speed.

I can't say enough good things about this board. Even with all this hardware, the install was a piece of cake. The system is TOTALLY stable, and fast as hell.

Submitted by: John M.

   
Back To Top Of Page