would I get major perf increase going from a ZX to a BX?

[andylawcc]

I have an Asus P2-99 ZX mobo,
quite a stable, overclocker board btw.
I have a chance to swap a asus P2B for free;
does it worth the hassle?


meanwhile,
do I need to reinstall HW Drivers after Swapping mobos?
I know I need to remove everything in the Device Manager except BIOS plug n play and Network Adaptors.
so upon reboot do I still need the drivers?
coz I don't have them but the Win98 CD,...

 

[Haribo]

"is it worth the hassle?"

I beleive it is!

 

[andylawcc]

so yes, swap it
or no, forget it?

 

[Haribo]

Did your mom never teach you that free is always good 😉

Swap it!

 

[AndyHui]

You will find that there is no performance difference at all between the ASUS P2-99 and the P2B. Essentially, the ZX and the BX chipsets are the same, but the ZX has no SMP, smaller amount of supported RAM, and a max of only 4 PCI slots.

Unless you need 3 DIMM slots instead of 2, I would say that there is no real point to change from the P2-99 to the P2B.

The PCB revisions for the 2 boards are exactly the same....P2-99 came as rev 1.12, the only physical difference on the board (apart from the chipset itself), is the 1 less DIMM on the P2-99.

Hope that helps.

 

[AndyHui]

Oh...you won't have to reinstall HW drivers and stuff either, as long as you plug in everything into the same slots, since the BX and ZX chipsets use the same inf file, and actually installs the same devices.

BIOS upgrade paths are similar as well, so make sure you upgrade to the latest BIOS before you swap if you do plan to go ahead.

 

[andylawcc]

Andy
thanks....
🙂
Andy

 

[obeseotron]

worst case reinstall sound/nic drivers cause of irq change. It isn't worth it as a speed increase, wait till you NEED a new mobo.

 

[Mday]

andyhui is correct.

frankly i picked a BX board over a ZX. but that's me. i did not like the idea of going zx which was a neutered version of the bx.