"_|_|_" said:
PS: I think one of the reasons for the crashes is driver stability.
I'd also like to move up to a newer gen of sound hardware. Also need
to do video capture but I'm out of card slots. Just added another
printer, so even the last USB2 port is taken. Now that I think about
it, if I can't reuse the CPU in another board later, it may be the end
of the road for this box.
LL
Maybe you should do some testing of your existing board.
Memtest86+ from
www.memtest.org can be used to test the
memory. You use the program to format a floppy - it places
a self-booting test program on the floppy, so no OS is needed.
The floppy boots the machine, and tests all of the memory -
the program even moves itself out of the way and "tests
underneath". That is why this program is better than the
average free memory test program.
The second program to use is Prime95 (mersenne.org). That
program runs in Windows, and if you use the "torture test"
option, the processor is run at 100% load. A calculation
with a known answer is done, and if there are any problems
with processor, memory, or a weak power supply, this program
will help find it. It found memory problems here, on a machine
that passed memtest86+.
As for getting another motherboard, I still don't see any
great advantage to socket 775 systems. You can certainly get
faster processors for that socket, but the price of those
processors is outside most people's budget range.
In your case, the S775 systems for the most part, have
PCI Express, and that will hurt your expansion options.
There aren't enough PCI Express cards around yet, to make
PCI Express slots on a motherboard a viable proposition.
That leaves mixed technology boards like the P5P800 - it
has a S775 socket, but the rest of the board uses a previous
generation chipset. The result is you get to reuse your AGP
card and get to buy cheaper DDR memory. There are 5 PCI slots
on that one.
In the S478 boards, there are a whole variety of P4P800 and
P4C800 family boards. Typically there are five PCI slots on
those. The P4G800-V actually has six PCI slots, presumably to
make up for the crappy chips they included on the board. I
think this board was designed for an OEM, and a retail version
was "made from the same mould". This board doesn't appear
to be too common.
http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P4G800-V<s=01
I would have recommended one of these options earlier, but for
one issue. I don't know if you have heard of the Southbridge
latchup problem, but ICH4/ICH5/ICH5R motherboards are failing
left and right, due to what appears to be static discharge into
their USB ports. What happens, is the Southbridge appears to go
into latchup - a lot of current flows inside the Southbridge
and it gets so hot, it burns up. This is the only public
recognition of the problem - this would apply to your P4C800-E
Deluxe, for example. Hot-plugging USB devices into the
motherboard USB ports is when the problem happens:
http://tw.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/FAQ/FAQ_456.htm
Pictures of what latchup can do to the Southbridge...
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84122&highlight=usb+port
Latchup has even happened to the P5P800 boards, as they use
the ICH5 Southbridge.
What this means, is if you buy a motherboard with a ICH5 or
ICH5R on it, you should continue to use the USB card that
you've got in the P4T-E. By using a separate PCI USB card,
that avoids the risks with using the USB ports on the new
motherboard. I believe there is more to this issue than
we know about, but only time will tell if any of the parties
(Intel or Asus), will give us more information about what the
real problem is. It is unclear to me, whether the motherboards
being repaired under warranty, are still prone to the same
failure mechanism or not, because Asus hasn't admitted there
is a problem on any of their web pages (like their FAQ pages).
I have a P4C800-E Deluxe myself, so this bugs me too.
Paul
Nothing wrong