Announcement

**Dr Mordrid** · 29 January 2001, 20:17

Having used products made by just about everyone at one time or another I'd start out by making these recommendations;

1. do NOT get a board with any integrated hardware if at all possible. I *might* make an exception for the Promise ATA100 chipset as a secondary IDE or RAID controller, but generally it's a bad idea.

2. ASUS makes the best mainboards I've ever used. Given the same chipset their boards will do better editing video than ABIT or most any other boards. Sorry if that offends some, but I've been there-done that.

For an Athlon system I'd look at their A7V133, K7M and A7M266. The A7M266 looks like it'll be a beast once the 266mhz FSB Athlons arrive.

For a PIII system I'd look at their CUV4X.

3. Avoid the i815e chipset if you ever plan on upgrading to a high performance board like the RT-2000, DV500, Canopus Storm (actually this one really should use dual CPU's) or anything similar.

The i815 has limitations in the BIOS, most notably a max AGP apature of only 64 megs. RT-2000's using the i815 chipset cannot export MPEG-2 IBP because of this limitation.

Dr. Mordrid

[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 30 January 2001).]

**FrankDC** · 29 January 2001, 22:03

I agree with everything Dr. Mordrid said, with one exception. Stay away from anything with the word "Via" on it, including Asus' CUV4X. If you don't want to take my word for it, visit any of the motherboard usenet groups (not just Asus) and read the horror stories for yourself.

**LC1104** · 29 January 2001, 22:42

you could stink with your P3B-F if you bought the PIII ghz 100 mhz fsb processor. That's what i want to do. But i don't think the price will be as low.

**Trinity** · 29 January 2001, 23:30

I don't think there is such a thing as a 100 fsb 1 Ghz cpu, only 133 fsb. 850 Mhz is the highest you can go with 100 fsb.

So far, it seems selection is slim for 133 fsb motherboards that don't use the expensive RAM and aren't VIA chipsets. The Intel 815 chipset seems to be deliberately crippled with max 512 Mb ram and a small AGP aperture as the Doc states.

The tried and true 440BX chipset at 133 fsb looks interesting but I'm not sure if the Marvel G-400 will run ok at 2/3 of 133 = 89Mhz . Can anyone confirm? If I go this route, the Asus CUBX and Microstar BXMaster are contenders...

**Trinity** · 30 January 2001, 00:00

I was wrong...1 Ghz does indeed come in a 100 fsb flavor. And even better, it comes in a slot-1 package. I think it should work as long as I flash the latest BIOS and the lower VCORE voltage is available. It looks as though I won't need a new motherboard afterall...

**Elie** · 30 January 2001, 10:05

Hmmmmm, very interesting post there Trinity.
You said the 1 Ghz will be available in a 100 Mhz fsb slot 1 flavor as well?
I wonder if that chip will work in my P2B-D and whether or not I can run it in Dual CPU mode?

Another thing, just to add to Doc's comment about the 64mb AGP limitation..
Matrox will be releasing MVT 3.0 soon that will fix the problems with IBP exports and 64 mb AGP, hopefully we'll see that soon.
Other than that, the CUSL2 does not out perform my P2B-D in terms of stability at all.

Regards,
Elie

[This message has been edited by Elie (edited 30 January 2001).]

**Dr Mordrid** · 30 January 2001, 10:32

Actually the Asus CUV4X is up to snuff for the RT-2000. If it can run that beast it should run a Marvel G400

That said if you have an Asus P3B-F and can get a PIII/1ghz for it to work DO SO. I have several of these and they are just flat great boards. I beat the h**l out of mine and they keep coming back for more.

Now....I use a Gigabyte 6R7+ slotkey on my P3B-F boards. This, along with the 1006 BIOS update, provides FCPGA CuMine support and the voltage changes necessary. It also works with the Jumperfree auto CPU setup. I've tested it up to 850 mhz.

D**M Intel should have just updated the 440BX for 133mhz instead of coming out with that POS i815....

Dr. Mordrid

[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 30 January 2001).]

**rwierenga** · 30 January 2001, 15:48

Someone's gotta stick up for Via ..

I've had an Asus P3V4X (Via Apollo Pro 133A) for the last 6 months and it has not given me one moment's trouble. I've upgraded from Win 98Se to Win ME, played around with video cards from every major manufacturer (3dfx Voodoo 5 (RIP); nVidia Geforce and Geforce 2; ATI AIW Radeon; and finally Marvel G400), swapped out sound cards a few times, gone from generic firewire to a Canopus DV Raptor and added a Promise Ultra100 adapter - and the P3V4X has just kept humming right along. This was in contrast to my previous BX board (a Soyo), which was fast but awfully prone to BSODs. I draw two lessons from this:

(1) Go with Asus. I agree with what everyone else is saying: their boards are substantially less flakey than just about everyone else's.

(2) Don't be an early adopter, no matter who's making the board. Buy a board that uses a chipset that's been shipping for 6 months or more - it seems to take that long to get the BIOS issues resolved. If you buy any earlier than that you're just asking to be an unpaid beta tester.

**jeepman** · 30 January 2001, 18:09

I know you were talking about a PIII board, and this may validate that decision. My problem is I get the Athlons for free from work, and I should be receiving a 1.2GHz this week. It is hard to pass up saving $200-$400.

All I can say is trying to use the A7V and the AIW Radeon was very frustrating. I could not get very much functionality under W2K. I could capture fine under W2K with MPEG-2, but I could not get Premiere 6 to edit an MPEG-2 file. I have MSP 5.2 and it needs VfW, so that was useless.

I tried to use AVI_IO, but the W2K WDM Capture driver is limited to 352x288 as a max size, so that seemed like a dead end to. I got the same size limit in Premiere as well because it use the same WDM Cap driver.

Anyways, I am back to my old G200 Marvel, and besides the crashes and video corruption under W2K, it seems to work OK.

------------------
ASUS A7V, 256MB Infineon PC133, "Copper" Athlon 900@1105MHz, GlobalWin FOP38 with Delta 7000 RPM 38CFM fan. eVGA eGeForce2 MX, 3COM 905C NIC, Adaptec 2940UW Ultra-Wide SCSI, SBLive PCI 1024. Segate Medalist PRO 9.1GB UW SCSI 7200RPM, Seagate Barracuda 4.3GB UW SCSI 7200RPM, Maxtor 20.4GB ATA66 7200RPM 2MB Cache, 8GB tape b/u, Sony IDE Spressa 8x/4x/32x CDROM RW, RAID 0 stripe set on hacked Promise ATA100 with dual Quantum Fireball Plus LM 30GB ATA66 drives.

**wkulecz** · 30 January 2001, 19:46

jeepman,

VIA chipsets and W2K has been nogo for me but I haven't tried the new KT133a with 686B southbridge -- this is the one that is finally supposed to work.

I've having very good success with an Athelon700 in an ASUS K7M AMD750 chipset board.

AVI_IO will capture larger sizes but this threw me too at first. Under the file menu is a capture settings selection. It the dialog box that pops up is a checkbox for "custom size" then you can set 640x480 etc. Works great!

--wally.

**Graham Meredith** · 31 January 2001, 14:45

So then, with my setup, what is the fastest processor that I can fit in my board? I have a Gigabyte BX6E that says on the box "up to 650 MHz processor", but I have read in forums where people have put faster processors than their board states just by setting up the jumpers to suit the chip speed. Is this true? My board has manual jumpers.

Setup:

P111 450
Gigabyte BX6E motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 20.4G 7200rpm HD
Ricoh MP6200A CDRW
Creative 48x CDROM
196MB RAM (3 x 64MB cards)
Marvel G400-TV video capture card
using Powerdesk 5.55
and Video Tools 1.54

Creative Soundblaster AWE64G sound card
Turtle beach Malibu sound card

Winbond 10MB/s Network card
Web Excel 56k V90 external modem

KTX writing tablet
Epson Photo 700 printer
IBM Ideascan scanner

Software:

Windows 98SE with shutdown bugfix
IE 5.5, Direct X 7

Announcement

Intel slashes CPU prices - 1 GHz motherboard recommendations?

Intel slashes CPU prices - 1 GHz motherboard recommendations?

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