SUMMARY: With the release of Intel's 800MHz FSB Canterwood chipset earlier this week, prices of the older yet still competitive Granite Bay chipset based motherboards should lower in price as shop shelves around the world fill with new Canterwood solutions. One such motherboard is the Asus P4G8X Granite Bay motherboard which Shawn "Toxic" Baker is taking for a spin today! Does it have what it takes to feature in your system? Read on and find out!
As far as Intel chipsets go there are two mainstream types - the 845PE and the E7205, both chipsets are very good, one is aimed at the normal user and the other at the enthusiast or heavy user. The Asus P4G8X we are looking at today consists of the E7205 chipset, otherwise known as the Granite Bay and is the second board we have looked at following this chipset. While the PE chipset is aimed for the person who might just use their machine for simple tasks, gaming, word processing, the E7205 is aimed at people who want to get the most out of their computer. The main features of the E7205 over the PE chipset is the inclusion of 8X AGP and Dual Channel DDR support, unfortunately this only officially supports 266Mhz memory while the PE chipset officially supports 333Mhz but does not include the speed advantage that Dual Channel is capable of offering you.
The chipset is aimed at the enthusiast level or a low level server situation. The E7205 also comes with a very high price tag of around $450 AU (around $220 US) depending on what brand you purchase. It wasn't that long ago we looked at the 8INXP which is Gigabytes version of the E7205 and Cameron Johnson was very happy with it - we are hoping that the Asus board can live up to the same standards.
That should give you a little run down on the chipset, lets have a look at what Asus has offered us as far as specifications go, we hope that it is able to keep up with the Gigabyte board which we reviewed here late last year.
