Albatron PX865PE Lite Pro

Powerless to withhold his de-Lite, Nathan Davis bounds about like a crazy mofo

Among Albatron's newer boards, the PX865PE Lite Pro is one of the first based around Intel's recently released 848P chipset. Confused? The name is slightly misleading, as it uses the 'Lite' or cut down version of the 865PE chipset. Basically, the 848P is the 865PE chipset minus the Dual Channel DDR -- instead kitted with Single Channel DDR. Wherever Intel finds these confusing code names is utterly beyond us, so this was likely an attempt to blur the perplexity factor.

Being a Single Channel DDR board, this does indeed keep the costs down but theoretically, with such anti-superior technology, it should reap performance somewhat akin to a common Single Channel P4 board.

We sourced Albatron's PX865PE Pro II board for testing against -- and just to hurl you back into the black hole of confusion; this board does in fact use the 865PE chipset.

Both motherboards boast support for 1GHz Front Side Bus speeds (250MHz quad-pumped) and up, making room for some sensationally feisty overclocking.

One notable flaw we discovered with the board is when trying to use DDR333 memory with our 3GHz P4, it simply wouldn't run at full speed, settling down at 320MHz because DDR333 defaults to 1.6 times the speed of the FSB. The ratio can be changed, but the next level up is 2 times the speed, so unless the memory is of extreme quality, well, bugger. We read through several papers and found this is a known problem for both of Intel's 848P and 865PE chipsets when used in conjunction with an 800MHz FSB processor. The only workarounds are to wait for memory manufacturers to meet Intel's updated DDR validation specification, purchase some DDR400+ or overclock the FSB by a few notches.

Common components used were two sticks of 256MB Kingmax DDR400 RAM, a Pentium 4 3.0GHz (with Hyperthreading disabled) and a 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4800SE. As you can see from the result charts, we performed the highly theoretical memory bandwidth test with SiSoft's Sandra2003 on both boards. As expected the Dual Channelled Pro II came out on top, but screw theory until it melts into a hot globby pool. Looking at how close the scores came, it seems many real world applications aren't keen enough to accept the newly available levels of extreme bandwidth. This board seems to show all too readily that Dual Channel with all it's doubled up goodness, in many cases, simply can't be taken full advantage of just yet. Proceed with The Scratching of Craniums(tm).

Overclocking couldn't get much better than this. In the frequency menu, you are provided with a myriad of options including setting the frequency ratio of your memory to your processor, increasing the Vcore, AGP and DDR voltage in steps of +0.1V (+0.05V or smaller would have been nicer), the ability to detail the AGP/PCI/SPC timings or leave as auto, setting the FSB frequency rate (duh!) among others. Unable to resist we pushed our 3GHz P4 to a stable 3.70GHz (FSB of 247MHz) -- using standard air-cooling. To state the obvious, this is stupidly impressive. Surprisingly the 865PE board wouldn't let us go that far, primarily because it's programmed with less stressful frequency options. Oh, additionally it's $298. . .

Apart from a few minor memory problems, for a budget board, at $175 its performance is simply astounding -- bettering its bigger brother in terms of tweakability. This insane motherboard will be nothing less than an orgasmic delight for anyone looking for a solid, inexpensive overclocker. In the words of Firesign Theater, 'My brain has been boggled and made soft'. This one's gold.