Which BX board would you buy today

[Tripleshot]

LXi

I just called one of my suppliers to check on an Abit ka7 I returned and the RMA dept confused me with another vendor who was waiting for 5 Asus boards that he RMAed. Sounds to me Asus isn't as squeaky clean as you claim.5 bad boards in 1 shot. That wouldn't make me too happy in my shop.

We could go on and on about this and prove nothing. Some people know computers and are compitent enough to to work on them choose Abit for overclocking, ,,,,others by Asus.

I gave WARDRAGON a link to the Asus cul2 site LXi. I am not so damned biased that I'm blind.

I have an Abit BX6 II runnning my Linux server,My BE6 II I use to type this and a KA7 for doing my video and audio editing and testing games. But of course my experience doesn't count. Some people just need to read test bench benchmarks to make those decesions and then they can claim to have expert opinions.

Anybody in the know will tell you Asus has been trying to catch up with Abit for years. That implies they are behind. Gee ,I don't know how i could conclude that.(BTW, They have done a pretty damn good job of it too!)

 

[LXi]

5 RMAed Asuses, maybe that vendor is buying like 100 of them and 5 of them didnt work, I seriously doubt they can have 5 straight dead Asus boards shipped to the same customer.

Any more of this is nonsense. You can never say one has the lead over the other because Asus and Abit both hold their advantages, mainly Asus's reliablity and performance, and Abit's tweakability and overclock. Now Asus has pretty much caught up on tweaks and overclocks. I dont know when will Abit catch up in the reliability and quality aspect. Until then, I believe Asus is a better way to go.

Im sure you'll see this differently, and I know you'll argue that Abit has superior reliability, stability and quality. But thats not what most people who's had experience with Abit will agree.

 

[Noriaki]

If you don't mind ABit use the BX133.

I've seen to many ABit RMAs and problems with said RMAs to trust buying an ABit board, I also hate High Point UDMA66 chips. From all signs the new one (on the BX133 and KA7-100) works fine, I'm just soured on the one from BE6-II.

I would buy an Asus CUBX for Socket370 or the MSi BXMaster for Slot1.

 

[Tripleshot]

LXi

Well sir,now we agree. Let me buy you a beer. I have seen bad in all boards and good in all boards(Well amptron and PC chips never impressed me).That BXMaster from MSI is a nice board too. A few of the most stable that I intrust to business users that don't tweak is Tyan and Epox boards(models depend on choice of cpu).

Personally, I just love getting them working and in the hands of someone who needs to compute.

(If Abit releases that BX133 I will buy it,load it up,test it,and report back here what I find,and I can be just as hard on Abit as I am on PC chips if the board screws up.)

 

[LXi]

Cool, it's been a pleasure having you in debates like this.

 

[judgmentday1]

Do you guys know why they are not making any 815E motherboards for the Slot 1 version? It seems to me that it will be easier in the future to make a slot 1 adapter for any other socket version of future processors that Intel may invent, like in the case of the sweet coopermines that can be o/c in a Slot 1 motherboard using the many slot 1 adapters that we have in the market. I guess, once you buy a socket 370 mobo there is no choice, you hit the wall and have to run to the store to buy another mobo every six months.

 

[Eug]

"?133 MHz for All.? With the BX133 RAID you?ll find ABIT?s ?BX133 For All? manual appendix, which will help you overcome any difficulties associated with running 133MHz front side bus CPUs with the BX chipset. With special hardware designs and SoftMenu?III technology, ABIT?s BE6-II, BF6 and BX133 RAID boards can provide users with a stable PC133 system. PC133 is the latest memory standard, increasing bus speeds 33% when compared to the PC100. In the past, 133MHz speed was only available when users overclocked their system. But users have previously found that they could not overclock their system to 133MHz successfully due to set CPU, chipset and memory restrictions. The highest CPU FSB clock was 100MHz. Chipsets and memory also only supported up to a 100MHz system bus clock. The 133MHz CPU front side bus is now available and the memory standard has been advanced to the higher 133MHz speed. The 133 MHz system is now ready for market."

That's a big load of baloney. BX has never been, and never will be, a true 133 MHz solution.

Unfortunately, many companies advertise BX for 133 MHz, which is just misleading advertising. However, the Abit press release seems even more misleading than usual.

If I were to buy a new motherboard, I think it'd probably be i815, but not Abit because of the quality issues.

 

[Tripleshot]

Eug

You sure don't like it if Abit does good,do you? You read what they put out as there press release on a mobo thats probably a month from release, and you call it balogney.

Here, read this and then tell him it's all bologney.
http://www.overclockers.com/articles78/

 

[12Guage]

Personaly, I don't really care if someone comes up with a way to put a 1/2 AGP divider on a BX board. The fact is , most Video cards these days run just fine on a 89 mhz AGP bus. My V3 3500 was rock solid stable on a 98 mhz AGP bus. Dito for my V5 5500 on a 89mhz AGP bus.

Which makes me wonder, just what the hell is the AGP spec anyways. I know Intel SAYS its gotta be 66mhz. PCI craps out if you go 5 mhz over spec, but AGP seems to run just fine thank you, 35 mhz "over" spec.

Gimmee a 1/4 divider for my PCI and a 2/3 divider for my AGP and my BE6-2 takes my 700E up to 917. Try that on some hacked together, last resort before Via takes over the market chipset like Solano.

 

[Mikewarrior2]

Not all vid cards hit 133mhz on a 2/3 agp adapter.



mike

 

[JackMDS]

I have about 6 Abit boards (BH6, BE6, and BF6), using them for few years. The only problem I ever had was with the new (at the time) BE-6 v1 that did not let you change the voltage. Abit offer to fix it, I just took out the infamous resistor, and I am still using the board running P-III 600MHz @ 800MHz. . I had other boards too; Abit is just as good as the rest of them, and more, since no one offer the O/C flexibility as Abit.

Last week I bought my 3rd BF6, to my surprise there was a Big Circular Sticker on the box - BX-133.

Inside there was an additional manual that gave some suggestion about how to set the board for 133 FSB operation.

But the most important was a list of Video cards, that Abit tested to work with 133 FSB-AGP set to 2/3. A second list included SDRAMs that they tested as well.

BTW this new BF6 (goes for $86), runs a P-III @ 144x6=864MHz Intel HSF 1.7V. Generic PC133 SDARM, and Matrox G400. It is a little bit hard even to me ?a big complainer? to complain about.

 

[LXi]

12Guage: You wonder what the AGP spec is? Let me tell you what, you should wonder what your V3 is. You dont seem to know that do you? Well let me tell you, Voodoo series never took advantage of the AGP texturing bandwidth, it's basically a PCI video card that goes on to an AGP slot. Because 3dfx doesnt seem to think AGP is useful. And since they dont utilize AGP, it doesn't matter if the AGP bus is running out of spec now does it? You only have 2 video cards(both Voodoos), and you claim most Video cards these days run just fine on a 89 mhz AGP bus?? That's funny, try a TNT2, try a Matrox G400, try an ATI, try one of those S3 video cards, you'll be surprised how many of them failed to run stably at 133MHz. The thing is, 3dfx cards are exceptions because they dont give a sh*t to AGP, you're never safe with anything that utilizes this technology, not even the GeForce and GeForce2s are guarranteed.

 

[LXi]

JackMDS
<<no one offer the O/C flexibility as Abit>>


Hm... that's not only untrue now, it's untrue a long time ago. Many motherboards offered great overclocking/tweaking features that works just as well as Abit, even from last year. And since the introduction of Asus CUSL2, the OC crown no longer belongs to Abit.

 

[Eug]

Yes, many have missed my point.

For the newbie overclocker, BX-133 is a bad choice, because a few of them are gonna realize AFTER they've purchased the board that their old AGP video card is not gonna work at anything above about 85 MHz. Even some new cards don't work at 89 MHz, including ones that have been tested to work. Even if Abit went out and bought 10 cards that worked of a specific model, there's no guarantee that card #11 is gonna work. This may even be especially true of nVidia cards, since so many different companies make those cards. If you've been following the video forum, a few people have even had problems with their Geforce 2 cards, running such high AGP speeds. Now, a few of them tweaked the card to work, but that took many days of work, using knowledge many people don't have. That's why the press release is baloney. Unfortunately, Abit is not the only company guilty of shovelling the crap on this one though.

Now, if you're a serious overclocker (like many on this board) then this board may be good if you are willing to deal with the potential problems with Abit quality.


&quot;You sure don't like it if Abit does good,do you?&quot;

Like I've said time and again, &quot;good&quot; does not necessarily mean &quot;a lot of features&quot;. Good means quality first, features second. Remember a n=1 or even n=5 is statistically insignificant of saying a brand is good or bad, when you know 90% of them are going to work properly. But if you start working in the hundreds of boards, you start seeing the problems with Abit boards. Now I don't work with these numbers, but I have talked to some that do, and they all now steer away from Abit. It's just a word of warning to the newbies out there:

AGP BX at 133 is not guaranteed to work properly with many cards.

Anyways, I don't see what the big hooplah about a BX board with 133 support is anyway. My motherboard is 1.5 years old (design is much older) and it has 133 MHz. (It goes up to 150 MHz actually, and is reported to be stable at least to 140.) Indeed, it even has the 1/4 divider for PCI too.

I actually have one Abit product (not my choice) and it works, so I'm not complaining. However, because of their track record I choose other brands most of the time. But, when I bought my mobo 1.5 years ago, I went non-Abit precisely because of the quality issues, despite the fact the Abit boards were the most versatile overclocking boards. (That is no longer true though - many boards out there have tons of overclocking features.)

 

[12Guage]

Holy Smokes Lxi, since you're on this site you may want to take a look around and read some articles here. For example: the one that was posted just this week about video cards running on an overclocked BX AGP bus.

Guess what, most of them passed the test. Some had to be tweeked a little, like the Nvidea cards. Supposedly you have to disable one of those marketing features nobody uses but everybody thinks is cool cuz then they can brag that their video card has it and brand so and so does not. But once you do that, they seem to work just fine.

As far as AGP being usefull, I think it's a good idea to get viedo off the PCI and on to it's own faster bus. But as I recall AGP was supposed to free us from the limitations of expensive video memory by allowing us to use system memory to store textures. That's not exactly what happened is it? AGP is too slow for that, that's why you can buy a 64 meg video card today. AGP video cards store all texture data locally and only use the AGP bus to transfer textures if they run out of local memory.

Of course it does open up the doors for marketing hype by allowing manufacturers to say &quot; Our card has feature X,Y and Z&quot; Even though no programmer in their right mind would design their game to use those features.

Guys like you make me laugh, you probably read an issue of PC World last week and now you think you know enough about computers to hang around the message boards giving advice.

 

[JackMDS]

From a real scientific point of you, none of the information given here, or for this matter almost all the info that is given by the ?Pro Reviewer? worth too much. Any body who ever attended a basic course in Statistics, or Research Design heard about; Sample size, ANOVA, Standard error of measure, (or even a simple t-test) knows it. The all point of the most review sites, and BBS like this is the share personal experience. When I see the questions, and the remarks made by newbies it is pretty much obvious that most of them don?t bother to search for info, and do some basic reading (?Volt? is not a name of a rock group). I am in the helping profession, and spent a lot of time convincing people that they first have to help themselves.

It is very easy to type: ?Hey tell me what Sucks, and what Rules?.
In response almost every one tells you that what they have Rules, and what everybody else have Sucks?

Sharing our personal experience without personal attacks is the name of the ?game?.

 

[Chad]

No offense, but LXi seemingly takes every chance he gets to slam Abit. IMHO he is very biased against them (self admittedly I know). I would take anything he says with a grain of salt. A quick search on his name will yield you a ton of posts in similar discussions. IMHO, he doesn't give Abit a fair shake. Anand's review clearly stated that the BX-133 was Abit's new dedication to stability, and went on to say that it was pretty much the best BX board out there (applauding it's stability). Now, considering the question that this thread was asking (&quot;Which BX board would you buy today&quot, how is LXi not answering the question and instead pushing his personal biased (and unjustified) opinion instead?

I think the Asus i815e is a better board, don't get me wrong, but LXi is wrong. Abit's DO make great boards, I don't care what he says.

I think the BX-133 will be the BEST BX board out there, bar none. But it's not the best motherboard out there. Asus has that crown right now with their i815e. But that's not what the original poster was asking.

LXi needs to realize that when answering these sincere questions, that these forums are not his personal diatribe stand.

Peace out....