Whats the best ATX MOBO for K6 III 450?

[circleK]

Anyone?

[Ultima]

Well,

there is the asus p5a, it is a very good board.
There is thep5a-b, which has at and atx connectors, so you can choose.

And there is the epox G2, also a very stabile board, or so I've heard.

If ya have questions about these boards, just ask around, and about other boards as well ofcourse.
I'm sure you'll get more then enough replies.

Pim

[Peter M]

If you're going to buy a Super-7 mainboard now, it should have maxed out features, meaning UDMA66 IDE, 2 MB cache, and support for low CPU voltages.

Tyan 1590-2, Epox MVP3G5, DFI K6XV3+/66-2 spring to my mind here.

I've had positive experience with the Epox and DFI, and never had a Tyan in hands.

All the boards use the VIA MVP3 north bridge. The Tyan uses the 686A super south chip instead of the others' 596B, which adds two more USB ports and (optional) onboard sound.

The DFI board is by far the cheapest, it's a good and reliable board, yet has only 4 PCI slots. The others have five. The DFI is good if you need 3 ISA slots or if your budget is tight, otherwise, pick one of the other two.

Regards, Peter

[wtp]

I say P5A, i was gonna get it, but i'm getting a duron.

wtp

[Gossamer]

I put together a pc for my dad that consisted of a Tyan S1590 AT with 256megs of PC100 mem and a K6-3 450(when they were cheap). He's running 98SE and NT. The video is a Diamond Fire GL 1000 Pro.

The Tyan AT model is the same as the ATX except the ATX comes with ATA 66 and onboard optional sound. The AT came with 1meg 100mhz cache. Tyan also makes the same ATX board with a 2meg cache.

Memory settings are set to optimal as in turbo mode and I've got write allocation running too. I benched it with Sandra 2000 and the numbers were a little higher then Sandra's reference K6-3 450 board w/ 512 L3 cache. Not bad at all.

I too am dissappointed that AMD didn't continue with their K6-3 chips since the on die 256 L2 cache helps a lot and you end up with a tri-level cache. Some tests have shown this chip to have equal or better performance then Intel's Xeon in certain applications. Sweet.

Hope that helps.

Goss

[Peter M]

Gossamer,

the 1590 and 1598 are essentially different.

The 1598 AT uses the rather old 586B south bridge chip, UDMA33, no hardware monitors, no sound or modem, and only 2 USB.

The 686A super south used on the 1590 ATX brings two more USB, has hardware monitoring circuitry integrated, is UDMA66 capable, and has AC97 sound/modem units. The latter aren't used on all 1590 - sound connectors are optional, but all the other features might come in handy. Also, the ATX board has five PCI slots.

Regards, Peter

[circleK]

Thanks All!