Asus P3V4X or Abit BE6-II?

[Splortch]

I am looking to build a new computer somewhat cheaply for college and was curious about what board would take a P3 600e with cB0 stepping to 900mhz the most reliably, an Asus P3V4X or Abit BE6-II? I have heard about problems with the memory performance on the Asus motherboard and am also curious how much success there has been with 600e CPUs with this board. The Abit is slightly more expensive and seemingly worth it, but are there any limitations to the BX chipset that I should be worried about? The planned graphics card is a Geforce 2 32mb and two 128mb pc133 DIMMs as system ram.

 

[Agamar]

Well, I have an Abit BE6, and I really want the Asus board.... I think th BE6-II is just a BX board like mine. That means to get 133Mhz fsb you will have to overclock the AGP. That is why I want the Asus board.

 

[Aboroth]

If you decide to get a BX board get an MSI BXmaster. It is more stable than the BE6-II, which has the annoying HPT366 ultra66 HD controller onboard that you can't shut off. The MSI board is more stable and has the much better Promise ultra66 controller onboard. I don't know if you can shut that off though.
If you get a BX board the only problem at 133MHhz bus is the 89MHz AGP , which is 23MHz out of spec. Most Geforce2 cards can handle it from what I have read. I don't know how many people would tell everyone if theirs didn't work with it though.

 

[Citadel]

With my personal experience with both ABIT and ASUS boards the P3V4X is the one of choice. Stability, Ease of Overclocking, features.

 

[resinboy]

Had a be6/2 for 6 months ( yes, you can turn off the highpoint controller for the udma66). Nice board, user friendly. Udma66 sucked- could not get it right from day 1. I have the same 600e as you- i got it to 846 stable for apps, but only 834 for games (UT). My GForce seemed to handle things reasonably well. Decided to go for the Asus, as I would not be pushing the AGP bus so far out of spec. Got the Asus, did the required preliminary moaning and groaning over using the right drivers, and the board has settled down to something that I am very pleased with. ( note- with the Abit, I had to cut the agp memory aperture to 16 mg to keep it from locking- now, I can run it at 128 like it should be). Best I can now do is 146 fsb for 876 mhz. I run my ram at 222. It's a pleasure to not have to back off the mhz when I play UT Also, the UDMA 66 is fully auto on the Asus- install the latest drivers, plug in the 80 pin cable, and it's working.

 

[urbantechie]

Asus P3V4X...Personallyy I think the Asus boards are stabler than the Abit boards. JUst my personal opinion.

 

[sleepdragon]

if you are planning to run 133mhz and you have a agp vid card and your ram doesn't like 133mhz...go with p3v4x...

 

[Splortch]

As far as the AGP bus goes, my TNT2 Ultra runs happily at 83mhz. My current system is an abit bh6 with a celeron 333a @ ~416mhz (83x5). I have one PC66 32 meg DIMM and a 64 meg PC100 DIMM running okay at this speed. My friend who uses a BE6-ii has a 600e running stable at 914mhz using a 128 meg stick of expensive but guaranteed at 150mhz ram. His Geforce 2 runs at 2/3 of about 150FSB, so ~100mhz AGP bus, and seems to do fine. I am leaning towards the p3V4X but the memory performance of the VIA Apollo Pro 133/133A boards are known to be lacking. Now that the GART issues have been addressed, I feel that the P3V4X is a contender, but what about the memory issue?

 

[gtd2000]

Just to play devil's advocate - I have seen a few posts about the ASUS P3V4X motherboard - most of which were not from happy puppies!
According to the reviews nothing beats a BX chipset - in terms of speed!
GeForce runs no problem on 2/3d's of 133Mhz - my System is Abit BH6 with PIII450@600Mhz.
I'd personally choose and Intel Chipset over Via - but that may have changed in reality during the past few weeks with BIOS tweaks etc?

 

[resinboy]

I just finished using WPCREDIT from H. Oda's site, and it raised my mem scores to equivalent levels of my old BX board. You can get these Via chipsets to run neck and neck- just takes a little extra tweakin', and that's part of the fun!

 

[Splortch]

Thanks resinboy! That was probably my last concern about the via 133 chipset, and I certainly don't mind a little tweaking. I am aiming more towards the 700e cB0 now instead of the 600e. I figure spending $50 more is offset by spending loads less on cheaper 'normal' pc133 ram instead of expensive stuff that touts 150+mhz speeds reliably for twice as much. [7x133@~933mhz, 6x150@900mhz; clearly the 700e is better for those with cheaper ram] Now to decide about a hard drive, but that's another forum...

 

[lifeguard1999]

The newer P3V4Xs come with a Winbond PLL-IC which has 16 FSBs -- 66 (1/2), 75 (1/2), 83 (1/2), 100 (1/3), 103 (1/3), 105 (1/3), 110 (1/3), 112 (1/3), 115 (1/3), 120 (1/3), 124 (1/3), 124 (1/4), 133 (1/3), 133 (1/4), 140 (1/4), 150 (1/4).

Meanwhile, the older ICS PLL-IC has 32 FSBs -- 66 (1/2), 68 (1/2), 75 (1/2), 80 (1/2), 83 (1/2), 85 (1/3), 90 (1/3), 95 (1/3), 100 (1/3), 103 (1/3), 105 (1/3), 109 (1/3), 112 (1/3), 114 (1/3), 115 (1/3), 118 (1/3), 120 (1/3), 124 (1/4), 126 (1/4), 129 (1/4), 135 (1/4), 133 (1/4), 138 (1/4), 140 (1/4), 141 (1/4), 143 (1/4), 145 (1/4), 147 (1/4), 150 (1/4), 154 (1/4), 160 (1/4), 166 (1/4).

I do have an older verion ASUS P3V4X which runs great. It gets up to 146 MHz FSB with no cooling on the ICS chip. With cooling on the ICS chip, other people have gotten to 166 MHz FSB.

 

[DeadlyKnight]

THE ICS CHIPSET WAS CAUSING HEAT PROBLEMS THAT WHY THEY CHANGED IT THEY SHOULD HAVE STUCK WITH A BETTER CHIP THO INSTED OF LOSING 16 SPEEDS THATS WHAT MADE THIS BOARD WHAT IT IS !32FSB SPEEDS