Mobos that Mattered Most (a MaximumPC article)

[Homerboy]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/mobos_mattered_most

I thought it was an interesting read.
I actually had 5 of these:

Abit BH6
Abit BP6
MSI K7T266 Pro 2
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Soyo P4X400

 

[crucibelle]

Great article! Thanks for the link.

 

[AstroGuardian]

Hahahaha looool:
1. AOpen AX4B-533 Tube
2. ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid

Those two boards are hilarious. Respect!

 

[JM Popaleetus]

ASUS A7N8X represent.

I definitely think the IC7-G belonged on that list though.

 

[Eug]

Yes, the Abit BH6 was a popular tweakers board, but the Asus P2B was the stability king. Even in Abit's BH6 heyday, the #1 choice for reliability was still the P2B.

 

[WT]

I found it odd the Asrock 939 DUAL SATA-II wasn't on the list. With both AGP and PCIe, as well as support for a riser card to add AM2 (and DDR2 support) it seemed more popular than the Asrock board that they selected.

Mine is still running great. I've upgraded it to about its limit. Darn shame the Phenom microcode wouldn't fit on the Asrock BIOS or that was my next upgrade.

 

[tcsenter]

Some of the boards like the Soyo P4X400 were mentioned under the secondary "Most Unusual" category.

Some boards that should have received honorable mention:

FIC PA-2007
FIC VA-503+
ASUS P5A
ECS K7S5A PRO

 

[classy]

I owned none of those boards and believe most if not all were trumped by other boards using the same chipsets. Kinda odd I have owned none of them, I have bought and used closed to 50 motherboards over the last decade in my personal boxes. The best board ever made, I believe was the Asus P3BF. Its was the best at everything. The Iwill KK266-R was a another bad boy. IC7-G as someone mentioned should also be on that list.

 

[WT]

I owned none of those boards and believe most if not all were trumped by other boards using the same chipsets.

Not true in the case of the Abit BH6. This was Abit at the start of a long run where they were considered the best overclocking board manufacturer, with good reason. Followups like the BP6 only reinforced their skills at this.
At a time when Intel was charging a premium for its new PII 450 chip, a garden variety Celeron 300a budget chip at 1/3 of the price could be made to perform on par with the PII chip.

Wow, was that fun taping the B21 SECC 'pin' !!! It was a lotta fun and soooo easy back in those days to overclock, and many PC n00bs got their feet wet in the overclockers pool, myself included. I haven't run a chip at stock speeds since then either.

 

[Eug]

Well, like I said, the Abit BH6 was never really known as an uber stable motherboard. It was just more tweakable.

 

[Rifter]

I loved my old Abit boards, had a BP6 and a BM6.

 

[nenforcer]

BP6 FTW I don't think any chipset to this day has had the longevity of a 440BX.

They list a MSI KT266 board but I'm surprised they ignored any RDRAM boards, i.e. i820 and i850 chipsets.

Besides the overpriced memory they were the best performers of their time and only lost out due to the rest of the industry using DDR.

 

[GundamF91]

good times.

 

[electroju]

I am not sure why they did not mention Abit KA7-100. What is awkward in it is its 6 buffer chips to handle up to 2 GB of RAM at 133 MHz. Others can only handle 768 megabytes. Also they should have mention the first motherboards that included a diagnostic display. I think Epox is the first to include a diagnostic display.

The strangest motherboard right now is MSI with the Lucid Hydra model Big Bang Fuzion.

 

[ClockerXP]

Should have included the Abit IT5H. First real overclockers board I can think of & it had softmenu...

 

[Xpl1c1t]

Abit AT7 was the first board to drop legacy I/O (& onboard SPDIF in 2002!), definitely worthy of mention.

 

[::2dfx::]

What about market flops like the ASUS P3C2000...SDRAM through a RAMBUS chipset...faulty MTH ftw!!!

 

[ReefaMadness]

BP6 FTW I don't think any chipset to this day has had the longevity of a 440BX.

Perhaps the i865PE might be.

It was used for desktop S478 P4s (Circa 2003), but could run the S478 mobile processors, BIOS providing, then went on to be utilized on Prescott LGA775 processors (both with DDR1 and DDR2), included a stint with the Pentium M Dothan processors when paired with Asus's CT-479 Adapter, and even now will run C2D processors on the AsRock ConRoe865PE. This motherboard using the 865PE chipset is even capable of running the E5xxx series processors with a BIOS update.

That's a pretty impressive resume for a chipset, if you ask me.

 

[Fayd]

wth?

why did they not have an ECS K7S5A Pro on there?

 

[compman25]

Should have included the Abit IT5H. First real overclockers board I can think of & it had softmenu...

That's the board that got Abit on the map

 

[Loop2kil]

BP6 FTW I don't think any chipset to this day has had the longevity of a 440BX.

They list a MSI KT266 board but I'm surprised they ignored any RDRAM boards, i.e. i820 and i850 chipsets.

Besides the overpriced memory they were the best performers of their time and only lost out due to the rest of the industry using DDR.

Agreed...my 850i board with a HT P4 3.06 owned!!!

I did not see any KT133A boards but the A7V133 should have gotten a mention as well...Nice list and a stroll down memory lane.

 

[RU482]

fun read. thanks for posting!

 

[RU482]

what did ABIT in? was it the capacitor issues of the early part of the decade? or did they just merge/spit/ect into something else?

 

[chucky2]

Some of the boards like the Soyo P4X400 were mentioned under the secondary "Most Unusual" category.

Some boards that should have received honorable mention:

FIC PA-2007
FIC VA-503+
ASUS P5A
ECS K7S5A PRO

Seconded.

Also the California Graphics Photon 100 HC...if only for the total clamor it produced in the Super-7 world at the time. I actually drove out to Story City, IA from Chicago, IL at an absurdedly late hour, after the 2nd toasted one of these in the first build I did.

Arrived at a freaking house for the address. Went and slept for 4.5 hours in a local hotel, arrived at their start of business, and went into the back hallway, er, lab where he demonstrated that there was no problem with the Photon 100 HC turning on and off with my components, it was the Enlight power supply - the revised model no less - that was toasting the boards.

Bought a new board from him, an Antec power supply, and went on my merry way.

Good times...good times....

Chuck

 

[brencat]

Ha! Still have the Asus A7N8X Deluxe...and it's still running an overclocked Athlon in my long retired Win XP gaming box that my 7 year old now uses to surf PBS Kids with. Now that's longevity baby!

Seriously though, how did Abit's NF7-S not make the list? That board was a better overclocker than the A7N8X Deluxe... ?