Mobo differences

Kilauea

banned
I was wondering what the difference is between those 2 boards:

Asus P5B (I know this one is older)
Asus P5K

In real life situation what difference would there be between them ?
If I plan on using DDR2-667 RAM or should I use DDR2-800 ?
 
Having links to look over the specifications on each board would help. The first two digits refers to the cpu socket in general like P5 instead of the older P4 Intel namely Socket 775 over 478. The 3rd identifies the chipset on the board itself. On an AMD board the A8N 3rd digit signifies NVidia nForce while the A8V would be the VIA chipset and like.

The specifications for each board will show what the north and southbridge chipsets are as well as the features and memory supported. For stock and not ocing DDR2 800 PC2 6400 memory would be the faster memory to go along with a faster model cpu.
 
Sorry, I was refering to the

Asus P5B

Asus P5K

I already knew about the P965 and P35 chipset difference, about the P5K being newer... I also know about the minor differences such as the Firewire and number of USB ports, but what advantage does one get by going for a P5K instead of P5B besides having newer technology that will be compatible with future material.
 
The Asus P5K runs faster then DDR2 800 memory on that model.

Memory Standard = DDR2 1066/800 / 667 MHz
The chipset officially supports the memory frequency up to DDR2 800MHz. Tuned by ASUS Super Memspeed Technology, this motherboard natively supports up to DDR2 1066MHz'));DDR2 1066/800 / 667 MHz
The chipset officially supports the memory frequency up to DDR2 800MHz. Tuned by ASUS Super Memspeed Technology, this motherboard natively supports up to DDR2 1066MHz

The board at the first link Asus P5B sees DDR2 800 as the fastest supported. The P5K meanwhile is SLI capable while only one PCI-E 16x is available on the P5B model. On both boards run stock you would want to go with the 800mhz memory over 667 for that gain.
 
The P5K is not a SLI board

2 x PCI-E x16 (blue @ x16 mode, black @ x4 or x1 mode) supports CrossFire Technology
 
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Ok, but for RAM, I thought that if I did not oc'ed, I would see no difference between DDR2-667 and 800.

Also, I'm not sure I understand what natively support means... is it that its meant for that ?

Ok, so the P5K is Crossfire compatible, meaning that I could use 2 ATI cards together provided that they are the same... but if I understand correctly there is only 1 PCI-e x16 slot, the other ones are x4 or x1 ?
 
1. The P5B supports up to DDR2 800 and the P5K will support DDR2 1066 whether if you overclock or not, between DDR2 667 and 800 theres not that much speed difference.
2. The P35 is capable of handling the new Yorkfield and Wolfdale processors coming later this year which carry a 1333MHz FSB. Also along with this we have support for DDR-2 800MHz or DDR-3 1066MHz. The P5k Deluxe from ASUS carries support for DDR-2 800MHz memory only.
3. I think its kinda far fetched that they can call it true crossfire, it would be alot better if both cards were running 8X-8X or 16X-16X. With one running on a 16X slot and the other running on a 4X slot I dont know how they control the bottom cards sync. with the top one?
 
Alright, so in real life situation if I were to buy a Core 2 Duo or perhaps a Quad core (which I doubt), there wouldn't really be a big difference right now.

There could be one in the future if I were to upgrade some parts... is that correct ?
 
The P5K would be the one more upgradable to a point at a later date. The new DDR3 out sees some running at 1066mhz and may be capable there since htose are also 240pin dimms. For a stock build the higher speed cpu goes along with the fastest memory supported while both items at slower speeds are still supported like DDR2 667 memory.

On the older DDR boards going from the slower to the fastest memory along with a faster model cpu would make a larger difference there over the newer board types with the faster busses to start off with like Hypertransport. The main reason? The OSs and softwares still haven't caught up with the fast changes in hardware technologies.
 
On the older DDR boards going from the slower to the fastest memory along with a faster model cpu would make a larger difference there over the newer board types with the faster busses to start off with like Hypertransport. The main reason? The OSs and softwares still haven't caught up with the fast changes in hardware technologies.

No it would not, spending money upgrading ram and a processor on a older DDR board would not see more of a performance gain compaired to upgrading to Core 2 or Quad and DDR2 or 3. And were talking intel here, theres no Hypertransport on Intel boards
 
That was only one comparison without being brand specific there. When going from 1gb of PC2700 and an XP2600 1.8ghz cpu to the 1gb of DDR400 memory and XP3200 it made a world of difference for various reasons. The additional gain was seen when going from 1gb of DDR400 performance memory to 2gb of DDR400 value ram.
 
It still would not matter,take your compairson, then look at going from a AM2 athlon 64 3000 and 1gb of DDR2 400 ram and go to a AM2 X2 6000 and 2gbs of DDR2 800 ram, theres alot more of a performance gain than any Socket A you want to talk about. So no thats not true!
 
That was within the same type of memory and board type seen there. Going from DDR to DDR2 is a different process altogether along with the newer board type and other things to weigh in.
 
No no no, you said that you got more of performance gain upgrading a older socket A system than you do comparied to a upgrading new system because of software and OS limits, and thats not a true statement.

You said this
(On the older DDR boards going from the slower to the fastest memory along with a faster model cpu would make a larger difference there over the newer board types ) and you used the XP 3200 so thats socket A
 
I never stated a performance gain being seen on an old system over the newer hardwares. The performance gain was seen there on the old system when cpu and memory were simply upgraded. That is when going from 333 to 400 and running a faster cpu saw notice more then your claim of not seeing any gain moving up from 677mhz DDR2 memory to 800mhz on a newer board. Then take a look at the new 16gb capacity for memory on newer models and compare that to the drawbacks seen in both XP and Vista 32bit versions of Windows to see the comparison of OSs falling behind advances in hardwares. Six years without a new version until Vista? What cpu and memory where you running back in 2000 to 2002?
 
On the older DDR boards going from the slower to the fastest memory along with a faster model cpu would make a larger difference there over the newer board types with the faster busses to start off with like Hypertransport. The main reason? The OSs and softwares still haven't caught up with the fast changes in hardware technologies.

Now your saying you didnt say that!
 
The older systems were closer to actual release of XP and previous versions of Windows. The facts reveal themselves that the hardwares see a faster turnover rate then the OSs. 3gb to 4gb of memory was the max capacity of boards due to the limitations of ? Windows! One version besides the Home, Pro, and MCE edition was seen until earlier this year namely the first 64bit version. Even with Vista 64bit OSs are still in their infancy compared to what has been seen in hardware advances in the last 6-7yrs.
 
The real question was already answered namely both boards will DDR2 667 while the P5K will run upto 1066mhz memory.
 
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