Help, best MB for pIII 550e (slot1)?

[jimbc]

My old MB died. I need to find a slot1 MB for pIII 550e.
Cheap and stable.
Any suggestions please?
TIA

 

[sep]

You forgot to mention still available! I posted a similar question, but mine was for a Pentium III 1GHz (100FSB) Slot-1 Processor. Interesting enough this computer currently houses my P3 550E@610MHz. When I asked the similar question, which included overclocking, for a 1GHz, I got these responses.

ASUS P3V4X rev 1.4 or higher
ASUS P3B-F
ABIT BE6-II v2.0

All of the above boards are hard to find. If found cost around $75 and up.

If your looking for a board with options like AGP 4X, 133FSB, ATA100, etc. I would recommend the Abit SH6. It cost about $130 + shipping (checkout pricewatch), but is a good stable & available i815e chipset motherboard. Or look at the SOYO SY-6BA+100 ($90) with the same options. Both got good reviews and I was looking at getting one of them if I didn?t find one of the above boards. Yes, I finally got an Abit BE6-II v2.0 board on the way.

Good Luck!

 

[jimbc]

Thank you so much!

 

[sadb0i]

another vote for P3V4X
that thing is powerful and rock solid!

 

[Flatline]

Another vote for the P3V4X
I've still got my old system built around that board, never had ANY problems with it, and it still runs nice and smooth (and pretty damn fast)

 

[Gandalf90125]

The P3V4X is a nice board, but the memory performance of the 694X chipset is relatively slow. A BX board such as the AOpen AX6BC Pro might be a better choice as it would be faster than the P3V4X. However, the BX supports only ATA/33, meaning you wouldn't get the maximum performance out of a fast hard disk. Moreover, the BX only supports AGP 2X, but this is said to be a negligible difference.

My thinking is that unless you are running disk-intensive applications, a BX board would result in a faster system for you than the P3V4X would.

 

[Mockmaw]

Intel SE440BX is the best in terms of stability.. but you can't overclock and doesn't come with all the funky crap like raid found on other motherboards.

 

[jkersenbr]

I vote for P3V4X for the best combination of overclocking/features/price.

But everyone knows the Abit SH6 is the ultimate Slot1 mobo. The only one with intel 815 chipset....

 

[Marine]

On the other hand, the VIA 133a chipset has nicely matured and offers support for both slot1 and socket 370 processors. The TYAN 1854s Trinity 400 board is fast and stable and will take both slots and socket base processors. They are dirt cheap right now and are a great all-around solution.

 

[BeHeMOTH]

Well I have a MSI BX Master which I took my P3-650e to 933 ran great, I doubt you can find one but it was well worth the money. I took it apart to build another system but it's still going strong. It's also a BX chip.

 

[Merlin]

Definitely P3V4X...best board i have ever owned

 

[Merlin]

Also, wander over to the for sale forum, people sell some great old slot one boards for cheap all the time...

 

[DaLurker28]

Vote for Asus P3B-F. Running one right now, about 3 of my friends running it, and it's great! No problems, great oc'ing board, and fantastic memory speeds.

 

[DIRTsquirt]

The Abit BE6's have an onboard udma66 controller.. I just got one 2 weeks ago from pricewatch for 76.00 at my door

 

[Assimilator1]

Gandalf90125
I think you'll find that latter bioses mostly sorted out the memory bandwidth performance problems ,I recently swapped out a dead BX board for a Soyo 7VCA (694x chipset).With the mem clock set to FSB clock (100/100MHz),bios soptions set to Turbo,4 way interleave & CAS2 the VIA board nearly matched the BX's board score in Sisoft Sandra with the same processor.Also running SETI(see my sig) which is very sensitive to memory bandwidth AND latency the times taken to complete Work Units were very similar too.

Here's the scores

Cel 366@ 550 ,Soyo 6BA+III BX chipset(not the board that died but it did have the same cpu)
RAM @ 100MHz,CAS2

ALU 314 Mb/s (about 10% faster than VIA chipset)
FPU 354 Mb/s (about 7% faster than VIA chipset)

Cel 366@550 ,Soyo 7VCA VIA chipset,694
RAM @ 100MHz,CAS2,Turbo,4 way interleave

ALU 284 Mb/s
FPU 330 Mb/s

As you can see the BX is only a tiny but better

 

[steimm]

I have a P3V4X - it's good, nice o/c features, i.e. if u try to high FSB and the mobo doesn't like it, just press the big button - everything is back to lowest settings, don't have to reset by opening the case and everything else...
I agree that performance is not as good as in a BX-board, I have a Gigabyte BX-2000 mobo also. If I run my PIII700E at the same speed (933MHz) on those two, I get much more points in 3DMark2001. The BX is ROCK-STABLE in 133 FSB!!!!
One issue though, the P3V4X isn't so good if you really have to run the mobo with AGP4X - something that I can't find a solution for... If you have cas2 memories - another problem - they only run at cas2-3-3 at least according to Sandra...

That was me...

/steimm

 

[Assimilator1]

What is the difference in 3DMark2001?

 

[steimm]

The diff I get with those two boards is:
BX-board with 700@933 = 2481
P3V4X with 700@966 = 2027

I havent tried my new GF3 in the old BX-board - don't know if I'm goin to either...

I get 5688 points with my 700@945 on my P3V4X.


/steimm

 

[Assimilator1]

To get CAS2-2-2 on a VIA board you need to set the memory timings to fast or turbo ,that would account for quite a chunk of the difference in 3D 2001 scores.

Btw ,took you a while to re-find this thread?

 

[steimm]

I took me really a while... lmao...

But I have the settings as Turbo, actually 2-2-2-5 and it works fine. But when I look with Sandra it says 2-3-3CL.
I got one "explanation" from Crucial and they said that ASUS-mobos has some problem with the timings, but just the "older" ones.

/steimm

 

[FatMan42]

Another vote for the P3V4X. I got a year of solid, fault-free use out of that board before I sold it on.

 

[Assimilator1]

steimm
See if you can find another answer here or here

 

[Jabroni]

P3V4X -- ASUS all the way.

It NEVER crashed on me while I owned the board, unlike the MSI board I now have (for my 1800XP). Going to trade up soon for the ASUS 266A board.

 

[Assimilator1]

Make sure you get the A7V 266-E

 

[Olias]

Another vote for the P3V4X. Still going strong in my other system... P3-700E @ 933MHz. Yeah Baby