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Inexpensive P4 Motherboard

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

The Perx P4MFM is a new microATX motherboard that can take 478-pin P4 processors. It’s based on the VIA P4M266 chipset that supports 400 MHz FSB. It has on-board graphics as well as an AGP 4x slot. The audio is also integrated onboard. The main highlight of this board is that it can be used with either SD or DDR RAM modules. There are no annoying jumper settings to figure out for changing from one type of RAM to another. There are 2 slots for each kind of memory, and you can put up to 1 GB of SD and 2 GB of DDR RAM in them.

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It has all the ordinary features found in most boards. These include onboard and color coded serial, parallel, and two USB ports. Plus of course, the regular PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard. However, one drawback is that it has USB 1.1 ports, while the standard these days is USB 2.0 that offers much faster data transfer rates. There are three PCI slots for future expansion. Its IDE interface supports the latest ultra ATA 133 standard. It also has a software that checks your BIOS compatibility and updates accordingly from the website.

This board can be used with SD or DDR RAM modules

Snapshot
Perx P4MFM Motherboard
Price:
Rs 3,650 
Meant for: 
Office and home user
Feature:
Supports DDR and SD RAM
Pros:
Good price
Cons:
Doesn’t supports USB 2.0
Contact:
Jorjy International, New Delhi
Tel: 
011-6448533—35
E-mail:
jorjy@bol.net.in
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We tested the board using a 2.2 GHz P4 processor, Seagate Barracuda 20 GB 7200 RPM hard drive and Windows XP. We tested it with both SDRAM and DDR RAM, and also with both onboard and external graphics. The actual benchmark results can be seen in the graphs. As can be seen, there’s no difference in scores when running regular productivity applications, whether you use DDR or SDRAM. However, the graphics application scores soared with DDR RAM over

SDRAM.

The Bottom Line: At Rs 3,650, the board’s a great buy, especially since you can opt for SDRAM if you’re on a tight budget, and switch to DDR and external graphics card later as you want more performance, and have the money to afford it the extra hardware.

Sanjay Majumder at PCQ Labs

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