New Motherboard - any recommendations?

[Le Bodge]

Following a lightening strike, I’m having to make an unplanned purchase of a new ATX motherboard.

The departed board is an Intel SE440BX-2, and hopefully the 256MB of memory and the PII 450 from it is O.K, so a new beast that can utilise this kit would be good, though I will upgrade if the performance boost merits it.

I wasn’t intending to be in this position for a while, so am completely unaware of what’s going on in the marketplace at this time.

Any suggestions from you good folks would be much appreciated.

Le B

[Paulr]

Hi,
Until about six weeks ago I had an Intel SE440BX-2.
I upgraded to an ABit BE6-II.
VEry nice motherboard, installation quick and easy.
Very stable, had no issues with it at all.
If you are considering OC'ing at all, the ability to up the FSB 1mhz at a time is excellent.
All in all I can highly recommend this board.

[dZeus]

If you're willing to wait another month or two, the first i815e boards will be out by then... and they look VERY promising. They give you all the feature that boards like be6-ii, etc. have + more, and everything is integrated (so no more different patches and bioses from half a dozen different companies. All use intel drivers, which always are pretty good).

But if ou can;t wait, I would get the best i440BX motherboard, without onboard chips like ATA/66 controller and stuf. The Abit BF6-2 looks very nice.

[cjolley]

The BF6 works well for me.
chuck


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ABit BF6, P3-650@910, 128mb gh@140cas3, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@3.0, Pioneer 104s DVD, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Acatel 1000 ADSL@1.5mb/sec, Linksys EtherFast NIC, LG 995e, USB IntelliEye,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!

[YoKoMo [1]]

Went with an Asus P3B-F solid as a rock at 133Mhz FSB with my CUmine 600E. I tried a Abit BF6 and couldn't get it to go to 133FSB with AGP 2X at all. So it's Asus from now on for me. I was using a G400MAX at the time which sadly died for some unknown reason.

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PIII 600E at 800Mhz, Waiting for G800, til then Voodoo3 3000, Asus P3B-F at 133FSB (ain't none better!), 256MB PC133 Memory, 2 Seagate 18GB Cheeeeetazzzz.

[dwright]

I favour the ASUS P3V4X for 133FSB without overclocking the AGP bus (can overclocking the AGP bus kill the G400?). There are new VIA drivers for win2000 and win98 that ease some of the performance issues. I have 2 and they have been very stable at 133fsb. I also have 2 of the older ASUS P3B-F boards one running solid with 133fsb an cu with a geforce (the other one does 133 too but the PIII450 won't). They layout of the two boards is almost identical. I like the 6 pci slots and performance is tops. Both support cu with the slocket 370 adapter so you can upgrade your processor in the future. I would like to try an 815 when ASUS comes out with their design.

[giskard]

After owning a swag of Abit boards i decided try something a little different and purchased a Soyo SY-6BA+IV.

It's been very stable (PIII500@720) and if i remeber correctly, it was pretty inexpensive.

That said, we use both the Asus P3-BF and the Abit BE-6II in high traffic servers at work. Can't go wrong with any of those boards. Just the buy the one with the best price tag.

Cheers,

Garry.

[Gurm]

Have to say:

INTEL and ASUS. Therefore... P3B-F, until ASUS has an i815 offering.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Gurm]

Also, I like my BP6. However, if I weren't running Win2k, ALL Abit boards are too picky about IRQ's to work for me. As it is I have to shuffle cards because there are PHYSICAL bus conflicts on the B*6 (fill in a letter... H, X, E, F, P, whatever).

- Gurm

[paulcs]

I think the i815 suggestions should be taken seriously. It looks very promising.

If you can't wait or your uncomfortable with a new chipset, I don't think you could go wrong with an Asus or AOpen BX motherboard.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Le Bodge]

Thanks for all the info guys, you've been a great help.

I'm sorely tempted to wait for the i815 to be released, has one anyone got a links to a site that contains info about it?

I'll steal a laptop from work this w/e and do a bit of research for myself.....

Thanks again.

Le B.

[The PIT]

I don't think 815I will be available widely though.

[dZeus]

You can only wait to find that out