Best Motherboard for Pentium III

[Swordman]

i got a new pentium III-700, but i got a crappy motherboard and i would like to get a new one, can you guys recommend one for me? i saw Abit BE6-II, but it can only support up to 600 MHz, so it is out of the question, can you guys help me with this?
thank you

 

[Prodigy^]

look at my sig and go get the Abit BE6-II The BX chipset is still very good, stable, and it's a GREAT board for overclocking. fabulous BIOS setup menu. it's just because the specs were written when the fastest CPU was a 600 MHz

 

[igowerf]

Where did you hear that the BE6-II can only go up to 600? It can go a lot higher than that.
EDIT:
Oops. Just missed that last post before mine.

 

[Swordman]

so you mean even the spec says only support up to 600 MHz, it actually still can support more than 600 MHz?

 

[Swordman]

i went to www.warehouse-club.com and the specification says the max speed supported is 600MHz

 

[helloedchen]

new bios upgrade, new speeds added...it goes far higher than 600

 

[Swordman]

very cool, thank you very much, where is the site that i can get it at the best price? do you have any idea?

 

[LXi]

Doesnt matter, avoid Abits. Check Anand's reviews, they never get high marks or praises. The thing is they're unstable/unreliable and low quality. The resent BX133 round up winners are what I recommend, MSI BX Master, or Asus CUBX. Abits just cant match them. If you want AGP4X and overclock to 133MHz, you might want VIA AP133A chipset motherboard, I recommend Asus P3V4X, winner of Anandtech's Editor's Choice Award.

 

[Prodigy^]

FiringSquad praise it too the skies and they ALWAYS use it for testing

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/be6-2/default.asp

It cannot possibly be as bad as you say, I personally have no troubles at all with my board

 

[helloedchen]

yup, I would recommend MSI BXmaster for the BX based boards, Asus p3v4x for the VIA based.

In all fairness, Abit boards are fine to use if you don't overclock like a madman. They do tend to be less stable at higher speeds as opposed to the ones mentioned above. Not to mention the failure rate

 

[LXi]

Prodigy: Do you go to FS's messageboards?
They praise Abit because they're hard overclockers, but by no means they think Abit is superior to others. Other brands like MSI and Asus have proven to be more stable and higher quality than Abit, and recently, they're acting more like Abit than Abit themselves, outdueling them in overclocking. No, not saying Abit is that horrible, but it doesnt really makes sense to go Abit when there are clearly better choices.

 

[LXi]

Swordman, the i815 is on the horizon, so I think you should wait for that. There are some really neat i815E motherboards coming up.

 

[Prodigy^]

nopes, never been to the FS message boards.....

oh well, I'm probably biased because I like this mobo, but on the other hand I don't have any experience with other mobo's.....

 

[LXi]

Well, you'll know when you decide to try another brand. I've been around in the FS messageboard for a long time, and a lot of people were just like you. But once they tried some other brand, they're convinced that Abits arent the only boards that can overclock.

 

[Swordman]

i815e what is so special about this chip? is that better than 820 chipset from intel?

 

[LXi]

It's basically the same as i820 except it uses SDRAM and integrated graphics(dont worry, there is an AGP4X slot). It's not quite as fast as BX, but it's faster than VIA 133A. Which is good news, with i815E you get stuff like 4 USB ports, and ATA100. Kinda neat, isnt it?

 

[Swordman]

sounds really cool, when is it coming out? if it is coming out pretty soon, i will wait for i. is there any site with review of this product?

 

[LXi]

It's coming out real soon, I think the manufacturers are in an production step, and getting ready to ship them out, check these previews/guides:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1265
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q2/000611/index.html
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/guides/intel_i815_chipset/

 

[LarryJoe]

Very happy here with the Soyo6BA+IV.

 

[duff2k]

What do you all think about the Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X though ??? (Via Appollo Pro 133A (or whatever), pc133 ram, AGP 4x), 'couse i was gonna get that bloody thing , and is Abit BE-6II any better for overclocking/performance/stability (BX vs. VIA Appollo) ??

duff

 

[LXi]

The Gigabyte is a really solid, stable and quality motherboard. But at this point, there is simply no VIA 133A motherboard in the market that can rival Asus P3V4X's overclockability/features/stability/quality. Gigabyte is fine if you're not looking to overclock. BE6-II is likewise a good BX motherboard, but like I said, they're less stable/reliable than Asus and MSI. The best BX motherboard definitely belongs to MSI BX Master and Asus CUBX. But at this point, i815E seems to be the right motherboard to get/wait for.

 

[duff2k]

Any Slocket(slot1>FC-PGA) recommendations from any of you guys, 'couse i've heard that they can degrade the performance a bit ??

duff

 

[Robor]

The best thing about the Abit BE6-2 and BF6 (BE6-2 w/o onboard ATA66) is they have 1mhz FSB steps from 83 up. That's a great tool for obvious reasons. As far as I know there isn't another motherboard out there with that feature. IMO, if you're going to overclock get the BE6-2, if not get the ASUS P3B-F. The ASUS can overclock too but doesn't have nearly the number of FSB settings or onboard ATA66.

Rob

 

[LarryJoe]

The BX chipset is still the fastest, most stable and compatable chipset out there. I just read so many threads with via incompatabilities. I would reccomend a BX board with a PIII 700e and overclock it as high as your video can can take the bus. If you can overclock almost a PIIIE using a 133mhz bus and be stable on a bx board, you will have the fastest solution available clock for clock. If you go fcpga, any brand name slocket will do, if you go celery2(I don't see why you would given the PIII prices), get an MSI slocket.

LJ

 

[Charles]

I'm agree with LXi. I got many bad experiences with Abit boards.

Again, I'm agree with LXi's opinions on Gigabyte boards. They are rock solid! Obviously it's not an overclockers choice. But since I never run my cpu using weird FSB speed (83, 112, or 124) that's ok.

Gigabyte 6BX7 is my favorite so far. I tested it and compare it with my Asus P3B-F using Quake III Arena and 3DMark 2000.

6BX7 is slightly faster.