Please help me with my Asus P3B-f motherboard.

[Rachet]

I am trying to upgrade my system so that it is a fairly good gaming machine.

I just upgraded to a 1.0GHz PIII and I would like to upgrade my video card as well.

I was going to buy a Geforce3, but I learned that my motherboard is only 1.0 compliant - 2x, 3.o v and nine of the Geforce cards will work with it.

Does anyone know if a Radeon 8500 will work with the P3B-f? If not what is the fastest card that will work with it?

I am currently using a Xentor 16Meg TNT2 card.

Thanks for your help.

 

[ckat]

my 8500 is workin on my p3b-f.

 

[SharkB8]

I have a P3B-F but I didn't think that a PIII 1.0ghz would work with it. I am running a PIII 800mhz and I thought that the largest CPU muliplier the P3B-F supported was 8x? Am I wrong on this???

 

[Rachet]

Thanks for the info CKAT - now all I need is a good sale.

 

[Rachet]

Hey SharkB8 the answer I received from the Tech at Asus was:

If you have version 1.03(printed on the motherboard) or higher of the P3B-f motherboard you can use the 1.0GHz PIII (100FSB) if you use the Beta Bios that is available at their FTP site. The file I got was P3BF1071.zip- regular site only goes up to 1006.

I decided to clear my whole system and start over when I installed the new Bios, 512 Ram, and my new 1.0GHz PIII, I didn't keep the
e-mail I received from ASUS.

I did do a search on the Anandtech site on the P3B-f and found a response to a forum question that stated there was a newer Beta bios version that would allow you to install a 1.1GHz PIII -

Asus is still working on ther new web pages so good luck in finding the bios.

 

[Rachet]

SharkB8, I found the link to the Beta Bios

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/beta/mb/bios/

 

[SharkB8]

Rachet- You are the man!! I had not heard of this before you just told me and I am thrilled. I was concerned that the P3B-F had hit the ceiling as far as processors went but this BIOS definitely prolongs its life cycle, at least for me. My P3B-F system is the most stable system that I have and I really don't want to part with just yet.


A few questions:

Is version 1.03 a later run of the P3B-F? Mine is nearly 2 years old.

Are there any other noticeable changes with in this beta BIOS?

Lastly and most importantly, have you found any issues with this beta BIOS? I am not a big proponent of beta BIOS's.


Surely, since this BIOS is in beta release ASUS intends to perfect it release it in finished form, wouldn't you think?? Thank you once again, dude.

 

[Rachet]

 

[Rachet]

SharkB8, I am not sure how long after the P3B-f came out that I bought my board. If you look at your board near the Floppy disk controller, you will see " Asus P3B-f " in large letters - in that area in small letters/numbers you will see " Rev 1.03" or the appropriate info for your board.

I installed the new bios on Turkey day - also I installed a Toshiba 16X DVD drive, along with my Plextor 12X10X32 drive, the new 1.0GHz
PIII and the 512 PC133 Crucial Sdram. I do seem to have a problem with my Plextor and DVD drive - but PLextor is a little picky on how it shares system hardware, so I can't say it has anything to do with the new bios.

It will probably take a couple of weeks for me to get all the software loaded back into my system and to get things running right.

I am not having any problems playing Unreal Tournament so far.

Make sure you back up your current bios on a floppy in case you have a problem.

Asus may never bring these bios from beta to the status of supported bios - they probably just want to give most of their attention to the motherboards that they are still selling.

Good luck.