Upgrade to P5Q or not?

[niko084]

I have my current P5K-E, but I want an upgrade, mainly because I am thinking about tossing it in another system and getting rid of the old board that's in it, old P5LD2 945 chipset..

Now I was thinking about a P5Q-E, but is there something new coming out soon?
Should I hold off and wait a bit or go for it?

 

[Pinchy]

Id go for it...its probably going to be one of the best 775 boards to be made (not the actual p5q-e, but the p45 chipset). So unless your seriously gonna go P55/X58 with the new i7's within the next year or so, go for it!

 

[ShadowFold]

The P5Q Pro is the best board I have ever owned. I highly suggest getting one!

 

[Urbklr]

That is exactly what I did(but I sold my P5K-E to Don), and the P5Q-E is wicked, it's better in everyway over my old P5K-E...And has tons of features. I say go with it, you will like

 

[Kursah]

I love my P5Q-Deluxe, and I've heard and seen very good things with the P5Q-E's and -Pro's, tons of features, stable operation, cool running, easy to work with, and I'm pretty sure all models have the dual-bios feature which can come in handy. Best board I've ever owned, hands down!

 

[DMF]

IMO you should go with the P5Q SE instead and save some $$. The only real difference is that the SE uses the ICH10 southbridge (instead of ICH10R) and doesn't do hardware RAID. But as I've discovered, hardware RAID on these boards is a PITA. Biggest issue is that with hard RAID enabled, no non-HDD SATA device may be used on the MB. Got a SATA optical drive? Too bad. For mirroring use software RAID; the overhead is negligible with modern CPUs. For RAID-5 use an add-in card.

Or for even less $$, get the P5QL on the P43 chipset. Essentially the same as the P45, but supports a slightly slower FSB and RAM. You won't need the extremes with the Xeon, and probably never will.

Btw, check with the list of supported CPUs for the board you want on the Asus support site to be sure it supports Xeons.

 

[niko084]

IMO you should go with the P5Q SE instead and save some $$. The only real difference is that the SE uses the ICH10 southbridge (instead of ICH10R) and doesn't do hardware RAID. But as I've discovered, hardware RAID on these boards is a PITA. Biggest issue is that with hard RAID enabled, no non-HDD SATA device may be used on the MB. Got a SATA optical drive? Too bad. For mirroring use software RAID; the overhead is negligible with modern CPUs. For RAID-5 use an add-in card.

Or for even less $$, get the P5QL on the P43 chipset. Essentially the same as the P45, but supports a slightly slower FSB and RAM. You won't need the extremes with the Xeon, and probably never will.

Btw, check with the list of supported CPUs for the board you want on the Asus support site to be sure it supports Xeons.

First off any SE board by Asus is a crap board, always has been, they don't clock for jack and they blow easily. The P5K-SE had a MASSIVE RMA rate, so much my sales rep sent me an email concerning it. The onboard raid isn't full hardware anyways, and its far from crap, its on of the best onboard raids you are going to find. I overclock so a P43 is out of the question. Any board that supports the C2D and C2Q chips will support the 3k series equivalent Xeon, so not problem there, my chip is the same as the decided not to release Q6400 would have been.

 

[Eternal]

Niko084 is right, steer away form p43 and especially the Asus 'SE' boards. I havent had one myself but all i ever hear about, well 90% of it, is BAD. Mostly due to its horrible reliabilty n clocking issues.

 

[DMF]

I didn't say the onboard RAID is crap. I don't doubt that the controller is a prince among on-board controllers. (Battery-backed RAM would be nice, though.) I said it's a PITA, and it is.

Besides the issue with non-HDD SATA devices, you lose flexibility and to a certain degree redundancy with *any* on-board controller. If your MB goes down you can't move the drives to another machine unless it has the same chipset. With a card or s/w RAID the move is easy.

Btw, if OC is so important, you ought to say so in your post. You want OC, buy a Extreme board.

 

[Pinchy]

IMO you should go with the P5Q SE instead and save some $$. The only real difference is that the SE uses the ICH10 southbridge (instead of ICH10R) and doesn't do hardware RAID. But as I've discovered, hardware RAID on these boards is a PITA. Biggest issue is that with hard RAID enabled, no non-HDD SATA device may be used on the MB. Got a SATA optical drive? Too bad. For mirroring use software RAID; the overhead is negligible with modern CPUs. For RAID-5 use an add-in card.

Besides the issue with non-HDD SATA devices, you lose flexibility and to a certain degree redundancy with *any* on-board controller. If your MB goes down you can't move the drives to another machine unless it has the same chipset. With a card or s/w RAID the move is easy.

Umm no offence or anything, but what you said is total BS. I dont know where you got your information from, but its a horrible source.

Firstly there are NO limitations on the drives you use. I have had all types of configurations; RAID HDDs + SATA Optical (what I got now), RAID HDD's + SATA HDD + SATA optical, RAID HDDs + IDE Optical + IDE HDD, RAID HDDs + RAID HDDs + SATA Optical. I really have no idea what your talking about.

Secondly, in regards to your same chipset information...my previous setup was a P5B Deluxe which had an ICH8R southbridge. My RAID went down one day and Windows would not boot. All I did was hook both drives into my second computer (matx comp in sig) which has the G33M-DS2R, the ICH9R chipset. Once plugged in I fired her up, it installed my RAID array and all the partitions without a hassle (alongside the primary RAID array). I loaded matrix storage controller, fixed my problem and all was well.

As I said, I got no idea where you got your information from, but its not true.

 

[philbrown23]

dont do it, the p5q series are not that great that is unless you use KET'S modded bios of course.

 

[Tatty_Two]

dont do it, the p5q series are not that great that is unless you use KET'S modded bios of course.

he does not have a modded BIOS for the DDR3 boards, and without any BIOS mods my board will exceed 600mhz FSB with a duellie and 500 with a quad, it's the easiest board to overclock I have ever owned..........once you have bought yourself the right DDR3 because it is VERY finecky with memory.

 

[Urbklr]

dont do it, the p5q series are not that great that is unless you use KET'S modded bios of course.

How aren't they "that great"? Mine rapes my old P5K-E...

 

[niko084]

How aren't they "that great"? Mine rapes my old P5K-E...

Ya they are pretty much a world better than the P35's, my question was more or less if there was going to be something new right around the corner I should wait for, and from the looks of it probably not.

 

[Urbklr]

Ya they are pretty much a world better than the P35's, my question was more or less if there was going to be something new right around the corner I should wait for, and from the looks of it probably not.

Nope, All the new stuff is geared for Nehalem...Get the P5Q-E

 

[Tatty_Two]

Nope, All the new stuff is geared for Nehalem...Get the P5Q-E

Or, if you want to invest in the future now, get the P5Q3, buy yourself some cheap DDR3 and then you can use it next year in that X58 upgrade

 

[JrRacinFan]

You know Niko, that new DFI BloodIron board looks pretty beefy.

 

[niko084]

Or, if you want to invest in the future now, get the P5Q3, buy yourself some cheap DDR3 and then you can use it next year in that X58 upgrade

Highly doubt I will be going i7, they seem to be making numerous current chips, so I'll stay with what I can clock the piss out of. Kinda wait and see where it goes from here, don't really have any need for more power so.

 

[niko084]

You know Niko, that new DFI BloodIron board looks pretty beefy.

What BloodIron is that? The only one I know about is the P35, the LanParty P45's don't look too bad, but I have a niche for Asus, never had bad luck with them including the RMA process, but I know that's not too normal.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Here is the news post where I saw it at:
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=74051

I can understand your Asus enthusiasm. I am kinda biased towards Abit/DFI myself. It's nice to see people loyal to a brand but not "fanboy" it.

 

[DMF]

As I said, I got no idea where you got your information from, but its not true.

Where did I get my info? In the case of the non-HDD devices, both from the Asus manual and from trying it myself. The two SI ports do not support ATAPI devices - see the manual. When in RAID mode the ICH10R ports wouldn't recognize a non-RAID HDD or ATAPI (e.g. optical) device. I tried it. (I think this is also in the manual.) Believe me, I wish they did. What board/BIOS are you running with the mixed config? Maybe I need to try it again.

As for inter-controller compatibility, I'd say you just got lucky. I have yet to be able to move arrays between controller families. (To be fair, I don't try it very often. ) There is no standard for on-disk array descriptors.

The disk formats on different RAID controllers are not necessarily compatible, so that it may not be possible to read a RAID on different hardware. Consequently a non-disk hardware failure may require using identical hardware, or a data backup, to recover the data. Software RAID however, such as implemented in the Linux kernel, alleviates this concern, as the setup is not hardware dependent, but runs on ordinary disk controllers. Additionally, Software RAID1 disks can be read like normal disks, so no RAID system is required to retrieve the data.

Just to be sure about this, I discussed it with the brainiacs over on Ars Technica. I was of the same mind as you - that the on-board controller was the way to go, but I was having problems configuring the system. They talked me out of it.

Btw, I have plenty of experience with RAID. I currently have 30 disks in RAID-1 and RAID-5 configurations. I never considered software RAID a desirable option because of the performance hit, but apparently modern CPUs are so fast (and mirroring takes so little computation) that performance isn't an issue any more. Not sure I'd want to do RAID-5 in software, though...

 

[DMF]

Niko084 is right, steer away form p43 and especially the Asus 'SE' boards.

I understand why you say this about the P43, but what's the deal with SE boards? What is Asus' design goal with these, to make crappy boards? Keep the price down? I can understand that a certain series (e.g. P5K SE boards) would have problems, but it doesn't make sense across multiple implementations that share little in common other than the SE label.

 

[niko084]

I understand why you say this about the P43, but what's the deal with SE boards? What is Asus' design goal with these, to make crappy boards? Keep the price down? I can understand that a certain series (e.g. P5K SE boards) would have problems, but it doesn't make sense across multiple implementations that share little in common other than the SE label.

The SE lines for some reason all seem to have a bad history, I have owned many and have dealt with many, its a extremely common opinion, they also have terrible rma rates.

The P43 is a good chipset in its own, but its not designed for an enthusiast by all means, that's the problem there.

As for my comments about the onboard raid, I read it wrong I thought you were calling it junk not a pita...
Because a pita it can be depending on your situation.

 

[DMF]

I hope you're right about the non-RAID devices. Maybe I screwed up when I tried it. I'm going to try it again. I'd hate to be spreading mis-information. And frankly, I was astonished that Intel would build such a limitation into its chipset. That's not like them.

 

[DMF]

Pinchy, I was wrong about the SB not supporting other devices in [RAID] mode. Apparently I screwed up the earlier test. Thanks for prompting me to re-test and thus stop spreading mis-information.

BTW, software mirroring is hardly a panacea. If one mirrors the system drive some internals mojo is necessary to make the mirror bootable, otherwise a failure in the first drive still renders the system unusable (which was kinda the whole point in mirroring it). And if you established the first drive as 'basic' and later converted to dynamic (required for mirroring), the mojo requires the invocation of dark spirits...

So I'm re-thinking this whole question. At this point neither solution (software or on-board) seems to have a clear advantage, depending on how you judge the portability issue.