The Best Full Size ATX Socket 7 Motherboard Opinion Poll

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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WmMcNett
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The Best Full Size ATX Socket 7 Motherboard Opinion Poll

Post by WmMcNett »

I would like your opinions as to the Best Full Size ATX Socket 7 Motherboard for use with the K6-2+/550 and/or K6-3+/550.
768MB+ (1GB) Ram and 100MHz+ (133MHz) FSB without having to overclock would both be a big +

I have a DFI K6XV3+/66.
I'm wanting to build 2 identical systems using the two K6-2+/550's I have.

The DFI K6XV3+/66 is being hard to find so I started searching for another board. I found the ASUS P5A but finding anything other than Rev. 1.06 is also looking to be hard to find.
I did find 1 guy on eBay but he's so big that he won't look at the boards he has to tell me what Rev. numbers he has. :roll:

I'm starting to look at others, Epox, Iwill, Gigabyte, MSI, MicroStar.
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

I would recommend the EPOX EP MVP3G-2 which comes with 1Mb onboard cache and will take 3x256Mb SDRAM. The latest BIOS will take all of the K6plus chips. It also has ATA66 like your DFI board. The EPOX also comes with hardware monitoring which a lot of the SS7 boards do not have.

Stedman
WmMcNett
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Post by WmMcNett »

everthing I've found says Supports up to 384 MB of DRAM
128MB x3

The EP-MVP3G5 supports 2MB L2 cache


I did read on the Compatibility List under P5A;
1.05 and later board revs will NOT work. Perhaps the 1011 beta 2 BIOS might work as it does on the P5A-B. The beta 4 BIOS has been seen at the German Asus site. Need CPUFSB or similar software to attain 133MHz FSB.
Beta 4 BIOS at theGerman Asus FTP site. (note that the beta 4 BIOS isn't there anymore, now there's a beta 5? Does that version still work with the K6-2+ and K6-III+ chips correctly?)

I did read on the Compatibility List under P5A-B;
NOTE: I have a report of someone successfully using a K6-III+ 450 overclocked to 550 MHz in a 1.06 revision of this board.

Maybe I'll try one of the many Rev. 1.06 P5A's that are out there.
Jim
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Post by Jim »

The 106 boards will work very slowly with a K6+ type processor even with the 1011 v.5 type bios. What you want is a 103 or 104. As for the 1011 beta 5 bios, that is what you use with a Rev 103 or 104 type board. As for the 384 Meg of RAM some early Super 7 boards were limited to that; e.g. QDI Advance 2 boards; but for the most part Super 7s will accept 768 Meg of RAM.
Superpuppy 3
K6-3+ 450 ACZ (6x100)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Rev B2 (2 Meg) w/ 2x28mm Chipset Fans
2x256 Meg PC 133 Hynix SDRAM
1x 20G Maxtor (7200)
2x 80G Maxtor (7200) Ducted w/ 2x486 Fans Mount
52/24/52/16 LG CDR/RW/DVD
8/4/3/12/24/16/32 LG Super Multi
ATI 9000 aiw Radeon AGP
SB Audigy 1 MP3 Sound
CMD 649 IDE Controller
NEC USB 2 Card
DonPedro
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Post by DonPedro »

WmMcNett,

I recommend you to go for asus' p5a boards. it has two possible drawbacks: first, oc'ing the fsb will max out at 110 (112) mhz, second, the board features only ata-33 ide-ports. the last point is not really a disadvantag, because I would recommend to go for a sata150 add-in controller card (via chip). this way you will get hd-performance you can not get otherwise, even with an ide-66 onboard or ide-100/133 add-in card, because the fastest pata-hd available is 10 mb/s slower (on average read) than the best sata-disk you can reasonably buy: samsung s250 (single platter)

advantage of p5a: best stability of all boards that went through my hands (including mvp3g2, mvp3g5, dfi k6xv3+66b2, ga-5ax rev 5.2 and others), very fast memory performance from scratch even without tweaking around (compared to mvp3-chipset).

if you would like to go for 133fsb speed while agp/pci bus are going at 33 and 66 mhz respectively you will have no good luck with via or ali-5 chipsets. the only 2 chipsets that support 4/3 divider is the aladdin-7 and the sis530. both have their limitations at other fronts: only 2 (ali-7) to 3 or 4 (sis) pci-slots, both don't offer an agp-slot, the ali-7 has some stability problems but features pseudo-128 bit memory access.

if you are still looking for a k6xv3+66 board I am ready to give mine away. it is in 100% working condition but I would like to warn you that this board is rather picky when it comes to what ram-modules work reliably or work not.
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Stedman5040
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Post by Stedman5040 »

Although the EP-MVP3G (2) (M) or (5)is reported to only support 3x128mb of ram I can assure you that I am running 3x256mb low density SDRAM
no problems on any of these boards.

Stedman
rls48j
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Post by rls48j »

For me the "best" boards involve the most for the least hassle. I still have 2 MVP3G5s running. They.re stable, easy to set up,moderately easy to tweak and can support enough by themselves to be useable as is (USB ATA66, AGP) without needing add on cards or bracketry. The win 2000 one runs 3DMAX, Illustrator, Paradox, Bryce 3D, Poser and Corels Draw suite. As Stedman5040 is doing it has 3x 256 modules of ram...no problems in spite of them being mixed manufacturers and timings. Nothing fussy about these boards.
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