- Aug 4, 2000
- 433
- 6
- 81
I have now run both of these boards and definitely would recommend the Asus over the Abit at the present time, and it is just a few bucks more. I will list a few quirks from each and why I would recommend the Asus.
Abit: Overclocking was awful. Anytime I tried with P3-700 and PC133 CAS3 memory the system would usually lock up. The worst part was that when OC'g caused the boot to lock, the only recovery option was resetting the CMOS jumper, a real pain. Also, when I tried to install an OEM P3-667, the motherboard would produce a constant warbling "warning" sound, effectively making the CPU useless in the board. The board would run but the noise was awful. I could only get OC'd to about a 107 clock with the 700 CPU. The final bad part was that in Win2K with printer port set to anything above ECP, Win2K would not recognize my NEC laser and when I printed from Word and Quickbooks with the port set to ECP, I would get blank pages and other strange things.
Asus: Much better results. One thing I liked was no outlets for the onboard sound. This makes for a cleaner back end to the case. I did have some troubles when flashing the BIOS from 001 to 002. It appeared I had a bad flash as I only got a blank screen afterwards. However, reading this forum I discovered that some flashes require a CMOS clear. I would have normally done this but the jumper for doing it is missing from the boards. This is one major complaint about this board. I used a conductor though and this cleared CMOS by jumping the solder points and the board came back up fine then. I still had problems though with a P3-800EB and PC133 memory I had. I would always lock after memory check if set to PC133 settings, even with CAS options set for slower speed. I ended up running at 133:100:33 settings and set memory CAS settings to faster. The machine ran fine like this but I was upset about not getting 133 memory bus. However, last night I flashed beta BIOS 003 and now the memory runs fine at 133. Also, no parallel port problems with this board. Printer runs fine at ECP+EPP. Finally, Asus also gives you many more OC options and when it screws your system, a power down/power up will put you in a safe mode to fix the problem without having to open the case.
Definitely go for the Asus board unless Abit gets a BIOS rev to correct their problems.
Abit: Overclocking was awful. Anytime I tried with P3-700 and PC133 CAS3 memory the system would usually lock up. The worst part was that when OC'g caused the boot to lock, the only recovery option was resetting the CMOS jumper, a real pain. Also, when I tried to install an OEM P3-667, the motherboard would produce a constant warbling "warning" sound, effectively making the CPU useless in the board. The board would run but the noise was awful. I could only get OC'd to about a 107 clock with the 700 CPU. The final bad part was that in Win2K with printer port set to anything above ECP, Win2K would not recognize my NEC laser and when I printed from Word and Quickbooks with the port set to ECP, I would get blank pages and other strange things.
Asus: Much better results. One thing I liked was no outlets for the onboard sound. This makes for a cleaner back end to the case. I did have some troubles when flashing the BIOS from 001 to 002. It appeared I had a bad flash as I only got a blank screen afterwards. However, reading this forum I discovered that some flashes require a CMOS clear. I would have normally done this but the jumper for doing it is missing from the boards. This is one major complaint about this board. I used a conductor though and this cleared CMOS by jumping the solder points and the board came back up fine then. I still had problems though with a P3-800EB and PC133 memory I had. I would always lock after memory check if set to PC133 settings, even with CAS options set for slower speed. I ended up running at 133:100:33 settings and set memory CAS settings to faster. The machine ran fine like this but I was upset about not getting 133 memory bus. However, last night I flashed beta BIOS 003 and now the memory runs fine at 133. Also, no parallel port problems with this board. Printer runs fine at ECP+EPP. Finally, Asus also gives you many more OC options and when it screws your system, a power down/power up will put you in a safe mode to fix the problem without having to open the case.
Definitely go for the Asus board unless Abit gets a BIOS rev to correct their problems.
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