Which PIII cpu and mb should I get?

[Sir Hitech]

I am building my cousin 2 PIII workstations for CAD at work and at home and I would like to have your expert opinions on which cpu and motherboard to get. The man just won't take my advice of getting a pair of TBird's because his brand loyalty to Intel. Stubborn goat!

This machine will have 256mb of ram(PC133, not RAMbust..hell no!) and all kind of sh*t within and attached to it(G400Max, cdrom, cdrw, jazz, scanner, color laser printer, video camera, golf clubs, BMW M5..etc. You get my point). So, I need a motherboard with many I/O options. I have looked at ASUS CUSL2 and pretty impressed with it. Is there a better board than this?

I will be overclocking the sh*t out of these computers and I will be running Seti on it 24/7 as payment for building the workstations.. It will be the first time I OC a PIII and I am not familiar with which flip chip cpu to use for the best results(100mhz vs 133mhz bus...). Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

[SteveC]

Well, I like Abit's mainboards - only PII/PIII/Celeron boards I've ever used.

For the PIII - make sure you go for a 100mhz bus chip, cos then they'll overclock to 133mhz bus (or more!). If you start at 133mhz bus, you can't go much further.

Just going back to the boards - the intel BX is beginning to give way to other chipsets, and as it can't to 1/2 on the AGP bus speeds, you may want to avoid it if you're overclocking to silly heights (above 133mhz).

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Brian R.]

Just bought an ASUS CUSL2 and 733 PIII. Runs fine at 855 (155 MHz fsb) using the stock hs/fan. Fast

Had 2 out of my 4 ABIT boards die. Will never buy another. Will totally not recommend them.

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 05 November 2000).]

[giskard]

Hi Sir H,

I've just updated my rig to the following...
PIII700E @933
Aopen AX34 Pro II

Specs are here: http://www.aopen.com.tw/products/mb/ax34proii.htm

Firing Squad and HardOCP have both done reviews on this Mobo.
This has been my most stable system to date. Previously, i've had Abit, Asus and Soyo offerings.

Cheers,

Giskard.

[thecurse]

i just got a new cpu. i got a piii 933 flip chip retail box + abit flip chip to slot 1 adapter for $385 mail ordered. for memory since i had to replace my pc100 memory i went with micron cas2 pc133 128 meg memory for $85 each from a local shop. i got 3 and filled up my memory banks.

all this running in my abit be6-ii, which replaced my abit bh6 when i got an ata66 drive.

[Raptor^]

I agree with Brian R. The 2 types of Abit boards I've used (lots of BP6s and an BF6) have given problems and 1 BP6 expired inside a week.

The BF6 is rock solid now, but setting it up was painful

I setup a machine with an Asus P2BS which was stable and well configured right out of the box, even with the SCSI controller onboard. This is an old board now, but I remain impressed by it

BTW go for the 100Mhz chips, I'm running with stock cooling at 1.7v (slot 1 CPU though). The CPU is stable higher, but my G400MAX gives up above 89Mhz AGP bus


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P3-700E@933, Abit BF6, G400 MAX, 8.6 gig Seagate, 8.6 gig WD, SBLive 1024, 256Mb PC133... Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse, Keyb, Stuff

[This message has been edited by Raptor^ (edited 06 November 2000).]

[birdy]

I have used abit boards for a while now. I have had:

BX6 Excellent
BX6 v2 very excellent
BE6 excellent
BE6 v2 nearly as excellent
BF6 totally superb
BX133 excellent
BP6 fine when not OC'ed

All have been spot on except for one thing. I have never been able to get the Highpoint controllers to work properly . I have a promise card in my main pc and it works flawlessly. the highpoint raid setup on the bx133 seems to be a complete pain in the rear end. Maybe they dont like maxtor drives or something. The standard controllers work brilliant tho and even when benchmarked there is only a slight difference in average throughput.

I experience of three asus boards. One worked flawlessly. Another had onbaord vga that didnt work at all :-( and the other didnt like have it's bios flashed at all. They all had VIA chipsets. This was in my SS7 days tho so no doubt things have changed.

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1st system

Coppermine 650E @ 946mhz (145mhz FSB). Globalwin VOS32 HSF, Abit Bf6. 256mb Winbond pc133, USR Message Modem external, SB Live!, Maxtor Diamond Max 30GB!!@ 7200rpm, Quantum 850mb HDD, Promise UDMA66, G400 @ max settings, generic 50*CD ROM, generic 24*CD ROM, 3Com 10/100 PCI NIC. Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer USB. Win98/w2k Dual boot. All wrapped up in Songcheer Super wide with loads of fans and 2 PSUs. Belinea 10 30 40 17" monitor, FPS100 sound system, Cyborg 2000 joystick, generic keyboard.


Crossover cable

2nd system

Pentium III 700 @ 1001mhz, Abit BX133RAID @96mhz, 128mb pc133, 15GB Maxtor HDD, Adaptec 2940 SCSI card, Plextor 40 speed SCSI CD, Yamaha 8x4x24 SCSI CDRW, All In Wonder pro 32MB, SBLIVE, 3Com 10/100 PCI NIC, 17in Belinea 10-30-40 Monitor, epson 460 stylus printer, genius vivid pro 2 scanner. Generic keyboard, 3d program pad, Genius netmouse pro, Songcheer Desktop ATX Case ATX,3 00Watt PSU (original went bang)

[Guru]

I don't konw about other countrys but in Finland the 650-800MHz (100-133MHz)CPU's all wave the same price! So the Q realy is what kind of cooling you are planing to use! The standard H-sink and the G-Orb will take the 700fc-pga up to 933 whitout probs. However if you are planing to use an alpha pep66 I would recomend the 750-800MHz and if you are planing to use peltier cooling go with the 800MHz!

My main system:
P3 FC-PGA 700@994 142MHz FSB 1.70V(G-ORB still waiting for my alpha), ABIT 133 RAID, 2xIBM 30Gb RAID 0, 128Mb RAM (soon 256),SB LIVE, G400 MAX(works with an FSB of 150MHz+),DVD etc.!

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