P35 under $200

[FabulousFred]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16813127030

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16813138080

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131196

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813130097

I can only find 2 review on the Biostar model but it looks good......any inside info?

[jcarle]

I would never entrust my data to Biostar.

[ripken204]

they are all good mobos, except the biostar

you really wouldnt go wrong with any of them, but i would go with the abit.

[Messerschmitt]

I got my P35-DS3R Gigabyte for 150$ CAD 1 1/2 months ago

[nmX.Memnoch]

they are all good mobos, except the biostar

you really wouldnt go wrong with any of them, but i would go with the abit.

I wouldn't go with Abit either. The last good board they made was the BX6-2. Yeah, yeah...they had a lot of fanboys after that board who all thought Abit's boards were the best thing since sliced bread. To be honest, I put them in the same class as VIA chipsets...never buy the first generation because it's just not quite right (although VIA now takes 3 or 4 generations lately to get "close" to right).

As for the P5K line from Asus...see this post.

At this point with P35 based boards, I gotta go with the Gigabyte recommendation as well. The P5K boards are good...I'm just PO'ed at Asus for not fixing the AHCI issue by now.

[ripken204]

what issue is that?

im going to get a P5K Premium any day now, all i've heard about it is excellence.

[Messerschmitt]

If you do not use AHCI and you have a HDD connected through SATA cable, then the HDD performance will be just PATA performance? 133mb/s is it?

[puntoMX]

The last good board they made was the BX6-2.

Naa, for slot 1 it was but had loads of bad capacitors, this board killed the ABIT name . The BP6 was popular for modding and tweaking…

EDIT: Non of them are really bad, but the ASUS would be my choice, it has better features then the other 3.

By the way, I love to see that they have all solid capacitors and more then 3 phase power regulator for the CPU.

[Zxian]

If you do not use AHCI and you have a HDD connected through SATA cable, then the HDD performance will be just PATA performance? 133mb/s is it?

No - the question here isn't about transfer speed (as it rarely is). AHCI enables various SATA-only features, such as hot-plugging, NCQ, and some others.

[ripken204]

If you do not use AHCI and you have a HDD connected through SATA cable, then the HDD performance will be just PATA performance? 133mb/s is it?

well im just wondering what problem ASUS is having with it..

[nmX.Memnoch]

well im just wondering what problem ASUS is having with it..

I was even nice enough to link to it above so I wouldn't have to explain it all over again... *sigh*

As for the P5K line from Asus...see this post.

The P5K line is still a good choice. Asus is just a little confused as to whether or not ICH9 supports AHCI (Intel's site says it does, Asus claims Intel says it doesn't).

[ripken204]

hmm that does seem stupid. im still going to get a P5K tho, its a great board.

btw what is the difference between the ICH9 and ICH9R? just raid?

Edited August 13, 2007 by ripken204

[nmX.Memnoch]

Yes, just the RAID. Which is why it's odd that Asus claims ICH9 doesn't support AHCI, but ICH9R does.

BTW, you're going to drive yourself bonkers if you try to load either the Intel SATA drivers or the JMicron SATA drivers during WinXP setup. If you try, WinXP setup will BSOD every time. Don't load any drivers, then install the chipset drivers after setup finishes. This information is strictly for the P5K line (ICH9 versions only, ICH9R versions supposedly have AHCI support).

[ripken204]

well i wont be using raid anyways. thx tho.

[nmX.Memnoch]

well i wont be using raid anyways. thx tho.

You'll lose support for the features mentioned by Zxian. I'm waiting for the X38 before I upgrade...and hopefully Asus will have it right by then. I need ICH9R anyway though...

AHCI enables various SATA-only features, such as hot-plugging, NCQ, and some others.