Soyo or Asus

[bunnymud]

I am about to get a new motherboard and I can't decide weather to get a Soyo 6BA+IV or the asus P3B-F. I noticed some conflicts with the Asus MB, but I would like some other input on the matter.

[moreau]

I can only speak on the ASUS.

The only glitch I've encountered with the P3B-F is that if you disable APM or USB legacy support, win98 won't install correctly.

After fixing that, everything has been easy. G200 installed no problem. I'm running the setup below with DX7 and haven't yet encountered any problems. Of course, you may be thinking of the G400, which I also can't speak of.

In terms of quality, though, the ASUS has been great.

One other thing, it does lack a few of the FSB speeds between 66 and 100. It will do 75 and 83, but that's it.

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G200 16MB SG
PD 5.25
Bios 2.6
Celeron 400(500 oc'd)
Asus P3B-F 1.01A
Bios 1.003
256MB PC100
SBLive Value
Microsoft Intellimouse USB (IntelliEye, baby)

[Livius]

Soyos are fantastic and, most of all, stable. I'm using a Soyo with my G400 and they make a great pair.

[rickn]

I have an ASUS P2B-F, I love it. ASUS makes very good motherboards.

[SteveC]

Abit! (sorry, it had to be done...)

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Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", he said.

[bunnymud]

guess I could flip a coin, but I am leaning towards the Soyo. Thx for the feedback.

[merchant2112]

go for the soyo

------------------
EVIL IS GOOD. EVIL IS LIVE SPELLED BACKWARD AND WE ALL WANT TO LIVE RIGHT ?
INTEL EVIL INSIDE, INTEL SPYCHIP INSIDE
INTEL AND MICROSOFT HAND IN HAND AS THEY SCREEEW YOU OUT OF YOUR HARD EARNED DOSH.
MICROSOFT THE OTHER EVIL EMPIRE.


[This message has been edited by merchant2112 (edited 26 October 1999).]

[IceStorm]

Take a look at my specs.

Soyo if you want to overclock.

Asus if you don't want to overclock.

Abit if you want to fry in incompatible hardware hell.

Just my $0.02


------------------
Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 2x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM, 10/100 5-port Linksys Ethernet switch (30~40MB/min under Win98SE)

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!), Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 4x64MB EDO Parity RAM, Millennium II, Intel Pro/100+ client NIC, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

All specs subject to change.

[Snake-Eyes]

Boy, IceStorm. You must've really had a bad time with Abit boards some time in the past, huh? Other than this forum, I haven't really heard of anyone else having many problems with Abit boards at all, especially compared to some of the other companies out there. I agree that Asus is best if the board won't be used in an overclocked system- highly stable boards there. I don't have experience with the Soyo boards, so I can't offer advice on them.

I can say that neither of the two Abit boards I've got has ever caused any problems for me- the older one is a BH6 revision 1, while the one currently in my main rig is a BE6 revision 1. Both seem very stable and easily overclockable. Even given the number of posts by users experiencing problems associated with an Abit board in these forums, I have to think that these users represent a fairly small percentage of Abit users, which on the whole, like me, haven't had the mentioned problems.

Whew! Ok. Finished with the defense of Abit motherboards routine. Good luck with whichever board you get bunnymud.

------------------
Ace

[IceStorm]

Would you rather err on the side of caution, or go with a board that has known issues?

I've personally never owned an Abit board. I have had to help out two people who DID own Abit boards, back in the 430HX days (Pentium).

One board, the IT5H, worked great.

Another board, using a non-Intel chipset, didn't work well at all.

If you stuck me in a room and asked me to choose a board, I'd go with Soyo, then Asus, for 440BX. Abit's down there at the bottom of my list.

If it works for you, great. But from this forum its apparent that the problem Abit cases outweigh the "good" Abit experiences by a wide margin.

I also have to go with the reviews I've read, and the only slights I've seen against Soyo's board was that it didn't have ATA-66 support. The Abit's have been slighted for stability reasons from Anandtech and I believe Sharky Extreme.

[rickn]

and what exactly is wrong with the P3B-F? Friend of mine overclocks his P3 500 to 620mhz on his. P3B-F has both voltage and multiplier tweaks in the bios

[IceStorm]

I have no direct experience with the P3B-F. I do know that it comes in a rather dizzying array of flavors (Even FireWire support), so getting the "right one" may be a bit difficult.

The Soyo 6BA+ rev III is only made one way.

My P2B didn't OC stabily, and setting the jumpers by hand was annoying, so I gave up on it.

If I have to get another board, I may go with Asus, but I may just as well go with Soyo. All depends on my mood and whether or not I have a use for FireWire.

Two knocks against the P3B-F:

1) No power LED to show that board power is good (Soyo's board has this).

2) The floppy connector's in a really bad spot - between PCI1 and PCI2.

[Zwisch]

argh not soyo? I don't really like their boards nor their support... better off with Asus...

[bunnymud]

Maybe I should mention that I plan on popping in a PIII 500 Mhz processor, and I plan to overclock(but not to its' tits)

[Stringy]

IceStorm
My P2B didn't OC stabily, and setting the jumpers by hand was annoying, so I gave up on it.


Umm Well, I've setup atleast 4 systems with Asus P2B's, and I've had great sucess with P2's and Celeries...
My own system is Stable all the way upto 150Mhz FSB, though my chip won't do above 450Mhz because of cache issues.. it's an early unlocked P2-333...
So I run at 124Mhz FSB with the 1/3 PCI divider and totally stable, never had a problem... Same with the other systems, though it is alittle more of an effort to O/C, but isn't that one of the reasons why you do it???

As far as the Decision between Soyo and Asus goes, I have a preferance to Asus, especially with the new Bios... but that's me...


Craig

[This message has been edited by Stringy (edited 27 October 1999).]