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December 17 2000
Summary
ASUS is one of the first manufacturers to market with a board custom tailored for the Intel Pentium 4 processor. To facilitate the decision for the new platform, ASUS has added several patented features to the P4T, allowing for easy conversion of a standard ATX case to comply with the specifications and requirements of the new platform regarding structural support for the massive heatsink required by the Pentium 4. A high quality power supply circuitry as the centerpiece of the P4T maintains electrical stability even while using a standard ATX power supply unit without the auxiliary power specified by Intel. Highly customizeable BIOS settings allow to select the most suitable parameters for maximum performance at standard speed or else to configure the board to enable highest overclocking results. Performance is in the range of any Pentium 4-based system but the high selection of memory, FSB and voltage settings make the choice of a lower speedgrade Pentium 4 for overclocking it to the limits a very attractive perspective.
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Rarely has a processor release been greeted with as much controversy as the launch of the long awaited Intel Willamette a.k.a. Pentium 4. Performance expectations ranged from Secret Weapon to "Dog" and by now, a few weeks after the original presentation, the conflicts are still far from resolved. Intriguingly, the official launch had to be delayed by a couple of weeks with some AGP errors discovered by Dell being cited as the official culprit. Some rumors, however, indicate that it was not the AGP itself but rather some errors in the memory subsystem, in other words, let's blame it all on Rambus again.
Now the systems are available, the benchmark scores have been widely publicized and the business as usual is about to kick in again. That means, that the first Intel i850 OEM systems are available, Pentium 4 processors are available at computer fairs (even at lower speed grades than the officially targeted 1400 + MHz) and the first mainboards featuring the i850 chipset are hitting the market.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the world's largest mainboard manufacturer, ASUS, is amongst the first to bring their idea, of what an i850-based mainboard should look like, to market. Before going into the details of the ASUS P4T, I will quickly review some of the peculiarities of the chipset.
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