What is the Best Super7 AT Mobo?

[Scyber]

Since there has been a shortage of reviews recently on anandtech for super7 at motherboards I figured I would inquire here. I have to get a new mobo b/c of water damage so I was looking for the best super7 AT out there. Most of my other components are fine (I also lost and ISA NIC, oh well). My old board was a FIC 503+. I dont need integrated sound or video, but anything else is a possibility.

Please offer your suggestions.

Scyber

 

[Dyflam]

I went from the FIC to an Epox MVP3GM and its worked well for me. AMD K6/3 400 processor, 256mb PC100 ram, sound blaster live, blah blah blah... Occasional lock ups for no apparent reason.

 

[jjsimas]

I bought a Tyan Trinity S1598.. Anandtech reviews rated it the most stable.. It's quite stable. Only problem is when shutting down.. some hardware error causes it to reboot.. No scandisk when it does though, so I don't think it hurts anything. I don't know if this is the motherboards fault though.. Otherwise, I can loop WinTune and never crash which I think means that it is pretty good..

 

[Copperpipe]

The Epox EP-MVP3G and Tyan S1598 are both ATX mobos but very good ones.

But if you are looking for AT form factor, I strongly recommend the Epox EP-MVP3C2 for its stability, compatibility, and ATA66 support. It has 2x AGP, 4 PCI, 2 ISA, and 3 SDRAM sockets.

 

[Hyper99]

since there isn't any quality jumperless motherboard
like ABIT
you don't have much of a choice and have to settle for
lesser brand
jumperless rocks man
use them loved it
anyone who has it know what I am talking about
go for ABIT mobo duron/celeron
which ever is cheaper

 

[compuwiz1]

Super7, is really not worthy of serious consideration, except perhaps for an upgrade. It's a dying breed. Time to upgrade to ATX!!

But, if you really must, an Asus P5AB is a better board than the FIC. Actually, the FIC is not a bad board, just funky for many people to set up.

Hyper99, did you just use the words, Abit and Quality in the same sentence?

 

[dszd0g]

I have had great experiences with the P5A. I assume the P5A-B (just different form factor - baby AT instead of ATX) is just as good.

Two warnings:

1) Don't overclock. The Aladdin 5 chipset has many problems with overclocking and most newer graphics cards especially those by nVidia don't work on this chipset overclocked. Most nVidia cards don't work on Aladdin 5 motherboards at all because of a voltage problem. Asus worked around that voltage problem on the P5A and did things correctly. I don't want to say overclocking won't work. Just don't expect it to. I know of some people who have overclocked their P5A just fine.

2) For gaming don't put more than 128MB of memory in. The Aladdin 5 chipset has a bug that the more memory past 128MB you put in the slower memory access is.

At least this list is about 1/10th of the bugs in the Via MVP4 chipset.

I know nothing of the Sis 530 chipset though. Anyone know if it is any good?

 

[Peter]

For nothing-onboard BAT form factor, the DFI K6BV3+/66-2 is the most modern choice. 4 PCI slots, 1 AGP 2x, 3 ISA, 3 DIMM, UDMA66, fan/temperature/voltage monitors, 2 MB L2 cache, 66/83/95/97/100 MHz normal and 75/112 MHz overclocked operation, AT or ATX power supply. Very reasonable price as well.

Epox MVP3C2 has the same feature set, but is offered with 512KB L2 cache only. Apart from that, it's also a good modern board.

The ASUS P5A-B, while being more expensive, has only 512 KB of L2 cache, UDMA33 and 3 PCI slots only, and given its age, I'd also tend to question the strength of its AGP 3.3V power supply circuitry. Gigabyte's 5AA has recently been revised to have UDMA66.

Regards, Peter

 

[Vette73]

FIC sucks, go with a DFI. I built computers with both boards and FIC eats up video cards and is very unstable. The DFI seems a lot more stable and plays video cards just fine.