Intel announces DDR333 Chipsets: 3-way 845PE shootout

ASUS P4PE: Basic Features

ASUS continues its recent trend of offering motherboards packed with the very latest features with the ASUS P4PE motherboard. If you take a look back at our ASUS A7V8X (KT400) review, you'll notice that the ASUS P4PE shares quite a bit in common with the A7V8X's features, layout, and BIOS.

Some of the more basic features found on the P4PE are onboard sound and LAN. Thankfully, sound and LAN are becoming more common on motherboards nowadays, and we certainly have no objection to this evolution whatsoever. The sound chip is powered by Analog Devices AD1980 6-channel sound chip.

Sticking with the cutting-edge idea, ASUS choose Broadcom Gigabit LAN for their 845PE board. Obviously, ASUS isn't aiming at the value or mainstream market with the Broadcom 5702 solution. This will become more apparent in the coming pages.

The I/O configuration is actually pretty high-end as well (although we would have to say that ABIT's MAX boards offer the most high-end I/O options in existence). You get two PS/2 port, two serial ports, one parallel port, a Game Port, and four USB 2.0 ports in addition to the Gigabit LAN port. Certainly not your everyday set of features; although most users won't really need Gigabit Ethernet just yet, the two extra rear USB ports are nice.

ASUS also goes ahead and adds some FireWire to the mix. This is powered by VIA's VT6307 chip, which supports up to two FireWire ports. There are two red FireWire headers located at the bottom of the motherboard to use. However, we're still wondering why ASUS didn't just use a VIA VT6306 FireWire chip (found on the ASUS A7V8X) instead, since it supports an additional FireWire port.

Nothing has changed as far as USB 2.0 is concerned; the 845PE-based ASUS P4PE supports up to 6 USB 2.0 ports (native chipset support). There's also a single USB header located at the bottom of the board if you've somehow already used up the 4 rear USB 2.0 ports.

We mustn't forget the Serial ATA Promise RAID chip ASUS decided to integrate onto the P4PE. This is the exact same chip found on the ASUS A7V8X (KT400). Therefore, this chip also supports two ATA133 channels (up to 4 ATA133 devices) in addition to two Serial ATA connectors when you eventually want to upgrade to a Serial ATA drive. We've found that some users are confused about whether the 845PE chipset natively supports Serial ATA or not; well it doesn't. Until Intel integrates Serial ATA support into their ICH, motherboard manufacturers will be using third party solutions such as this Promise chip.

Yet another feature the ASUS P4PE shares in common with the ASUS A7V8X (KT400) is the blue PCI slot located at the very bottom of the motherboard. Here's how ASUS explains it to us:

The PCI slot is an all-new ASUS feature called the "Blue Magic Slot". Besides supporting all the conventional PCI applications, the Blue Magic Slot also supports wireless LAN cards. The great thing about the feature is that it supports 802.11a, 802.11b and Bluetooth standards, making the A7V8X the first motherboard with all three standards. ASUS is planning to introduce a wireless LAN card later this year equipped to handle the three standards.