Without a doubt one of the most powerful feature packed Micro-ATX Boards ever to roll out of the ASUS factory.
This small form factor motherboard using the intel i865 chipset which will take right up the the latest(at time of writing) 3.4 Ghz CPUs, as well as the newer Prescott CPUs with increased Cache and even Extreme edition CPUs. Add to that an impressive array of onboard features including:
8 USB2 Ports(4 on the rear I/O shield, and PCI plate which will allow you to connect a further 4 from USB headers which are useful for cases with front usb connectors)
Onboard 10/100 Lan. For connecting to a home network or router for internet access or file sharing.
Dual Channel DDR 400. Dual channel is basically a way of putting in two identical sticks of rm, for example 2x 512mb crucial 3200, and the motherboard splits and fires data between them to effectively give you double the memory performance. Not to mention this board will support 4x sticks of memory up to an incredible capacity of 4GB
Native SATA support. Serial ATA(SATA) is the latest technology for hard drives offering increased bandwidth to let hard drives be taken to the next level of speed and performance. What makes the SATA connections on the P4P different is that they are native to the chipset, normally when installing a computer with windows 2000 or XP and using SATA, you would have to load in special drivers for the OS to recognise it. Since these are supported by the chipset, you are able to just install your Operating System with no need for complicated driver setup.
AGP 8X. It's not the size that counts, it's how much ASUS have packed into this, the board has the latest AGP 8x(Also referred to as AGP 3.0) meaning that all the latest graphics card such as the new Radeon X800 are able to run at full speed. This means that you can pack as much punch in with one of these small boards as with the normal P4P800 Deluxe which is a full size ATX board. *It is worth noting that the P4P800-VM comes with intel onboard graphics, these are more than enough for day to day desktop use, but for game playing you're better off using the AGP slot and getting a card.*
Onboard 6ch Audio with SPDIF out. The cream on the bun! Being a smaller form factor you don't have the usual 5 or 6 PCI expansion slots, so to eliminate the need for a sound card ASUS have integrated a sound card which rivals creatives original audigy. It also has a Co-axial SPDIF output for use with any compatible amplifier or speaker set, meaning that at no additional cost you've got 5.1 ready to go out of the box.
All of the above points make this board worth getting, but there's still one selling point to consider. This is ASUS. A company widely respected in the industry and known for their commitment to reliability and quality. We have been using their boards for over three years now, and I can count the problems we've had on one hand. The main problems have centered around the asus download site sometimes being down, but you just have to go back and try later, it's never been down for more than about 2 hours in any week I'd say.
In the computing industry you can't expect a 100% track record, but with asus, you can expect 99.9%. Buy ASUS and never worry about having a problem with your motherboard, you'll never go back to another brand.
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