Asus P5A-B or P5-99B? ...Or any better ss7 board suggestions?

[RSI]

Please anybody?

I'm looking at these two boards at the Asus website. They both have 3 dimm slots, they both have 100 fsb support, they both have K6-III (important to me) support, one has 512K L2, one has support for 1MB, etc.

Which board do you think is better? I still have all the parts I was using with my VA-503+ (PCI Banshee, SB16, modem, PCI NIC, cdrom, HDDs, etc), I just want to buy this board and stick it in there and plug it all up.

So is there really a difference between these two Asus boards, or would you rather suggest another Socket 7 board? Please I'd appreciate any input, I'm looking to buy a board like this soon, as it's rather important (need my computer working so I can continue my work for school - current work is on HD, I don't think I'll stick that in the P83 and load up Win2K...nah-uh).

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions/input,

-RSI

 

[Dulanic]

I had a P5A until I upgraded a few weeks ago. It worked flawlessly and im sure the P5A-B is even better.

 

[RSI]

Actually I think the P5A-B is just the AT version of the ATX P5A. I could be wrong, though.

What CPU did you use with yours? So far it looks like these boards are K6-III compatible, so I guess my K6-III+ here should work perfectly, given the proper BIOS update?

-RSI

 

[Dulanic]

I had a K6-3 400. Im sure the plus is fine, you may not even need a BIOS update but Im not sure.

 

[RSI]

Alright, thanks for the input. So you think I should go for the P5A-B? I'll try out everything at default settings first... In fact I think I won't even bother putting in all my ram.. I'll use everything minimally, to make sure I can get everything working completely first. Then I'll add in everything one by one, just in CASE one if my components is screwy.

I'll let you know how it goes if I get it..

-RSI

 

[Priit]

Asus P5A and P5A-B has ALi chipset, that may cause problems with newer video cards (everything might be fixed with newer BIOSes, thought). I would recommend SS7 MB with VIA MVP3 chipset, it might be little slower than ALi, but it has less issues with other hardware + some extra features.

 

[Dulanic]

Asus is very supportive with updates etc.... They fix almost everything given a little time. And the P5A has been around for a long time. Ive heard of no issues with it. Especially since they are probably on like their 7th board revision by now. They ironed out any problems.

 

[Priit]

Dulanic: You're probably right, but little bit more than year ago, when I bought my SS7 mobo, there were some issues with P5A. Back then I didn't dear to buy it and bought Aopen AX59Pro instead. Still happy with it. I totally agree that Asus's support rocks and it's nice to hear that there's no problems with P5A(-B) anymore 🙂

 

[Workin']

For an AT SS7 board you can't beat the SOYO 5EHM. I have one and use it with a K6-2/550. Works fine for me for about a year now. DIMMs/SIMMs, AGP, 1 MB L2, MVP3 chipset (labeled as Eteq but it's really an MVP3), plus it came with free full versions of Norton Ghost, Anti-Virus, and Virtual CD or whatever they call it.

This particular system has:

Soyo 5EHM
64MB PC100
16MB AGP TNT
SoundBlaster AWE64
3Com 3C509B
Toshiba 40X CD-ROM
11GB worth of space on 3 HD's (1 Maxtor, 1 Seagate, 1 WD)
All in an old Gateway 2000 486/66 case

 

[DaddyG]

Second vote for the SOYO 5-EHM, very stable mobo.

 

[Soccerman]

you don't have to worry about AGP compatability anyway.. all the driver updates etc have made that a thing of the past. just have the latest driver, and you should be fine.

go with the P5A-B

I currently get memory scores very close to what Sisoft says for the K6-3 400 128mb, VIA MVP3. says something about how crappy Via is for this whole generation of chipsets (from MVP3, to KT133).

I'm running a K6-2 400! believe me, CPU power makes a difference in these scores (don't ask me why, but it's the truth).

 

[Moving Target]

IMO the EPoX MVP3G2/G5 is the best SS7 mobo.

 

[RSI]

Thank you to all who replied. I've created a new thread with a poll (couldn't create a poll in this thread, too late) regarding the boards mentioned here. I'd like to get a good idea of which is best. I would really prefer a board with 3+ DIMM slots, although it's not very important. AGP doesn't really matter as I have a PCI Banshee and I don't care all that much about upgrading at the moment. Things I am concerned with are ATA33 or ATA66 support, K6-III support and K6-III+ compatibility, and AT form factor compatibility.

Here's the link to the new thread : Motherboard Poll.

-RSI