A good Sim motherboard?

I just wanted to get some opinions on available motherboards and any complaints or praises for them. I'm looking to upgrade now that the new sims/programs are pushing my system. The board MUST support 75MHz and 83MHz bus speeds 'cuz I like to tweak around with OCing. I'm looking at an AMD K6 200-233 as the new CPU, but I've not ruled Intel out. I have a Cyrix 166+ (150+ Oc'ed) now but am not sure about the new M2's. The CPU does need to be MMX capable and so the MB must support it. I've got an Intense 3D vid card and that will stay the only vid-card in the system (atleast until I see the N2 3dfx version). The Abit TX5 looks interesting for the price. The FIC with the 1Meg L2 cache also looks interesting BUT I don't know if it supports 83MHz. SHUTTLE? Asus? Any opinions on these or others are appreciated. Also, any good deals that are out there that I might not catch on www.pricewatch.com I'd like to hear about. And also, any WARNINGS about a dealer OR MB would be nice. Thanks, Alan [link lost in import: /~akh/simshop.html]

> The Abit TX5 looks interesting for the price. The FIC with the 1Meg L2 > cache also looks interesting BUT I don't know if it supports 83MHz. > SHUTTLE? Asus? Your mileage will vary based on the kind of components and RAM you have onboard, but generally speaking: Abit and AOpen boards run well at 75 and 83 FIC and Asus run well at 75, not so well at 83 Shuttle varies by board, but most run at 75 and 83 Personally I'm about to order an Abit AX5. Their SoftMenu (jumperless motherboard) sounds very attractive for overclocking. Read all about them yourself at http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard_socket7.html -- Neil Yeatman Ajax, Ontario, CANADA

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>> I just wanted to get some opinions on available motherboards and any >> complaints or praises for them. I'm looking to upgrade now that the new >> sims/programs are pushing my system. >> The board MUST support 75MHz and 83MHz bus speeds 'cuz I like to tweak >> around with OCing. I'm looking at an AMD K6 200-233 as the new CPU, but >> I've not ruled Intel out. I have a Cyrix 166+ (150+ Oc'ed) now but am >> not sure about the new M2's. The CPU does need to be MMX capable and so >> the MB must support it.

I just bought an Intel P166MMX (just before they stop selling it.) My rationale is to buy Intel since game software sometimes (often?) is optimized for Intel FPUs. The P166 is virtually identical to the P200. In the past, Intel marked down processors that couldn't do 200MHz to 166. I think, however, that they now can produce 200MHz versions without much slack, and that, therefore, many P166 are fully functional P200 that have been marked down for marketing reasons rather than technical reasons. The P166 gives a lot of bang for the buck, is game-compatible, and is pretty overclockable. Just a suggestion. I have the FIC PA-2007 w/ 1MB L2 cache. It's a good board, but it doesn't do 83MHz bus speed. However, since the PCI bus is derived from the board speed by just halving it, many cards that will run at 75/37.5 MHz give up when you go to 83/41.5 MHz. I'd like to try 83 MHz, but I doubt I would dare running the system at that speed for a longer period of time. It would be good if you could test your cards in a 83 MHz system to see if they can take 41.5 MHz PCi bus speed. If they fail, the FIC board would be a good choice. -- Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome. wopr"at"stud.uni-sb.de \ There is no "2" in my real e-mail address. Uni des Saarlands \ Sorry for the inconvenience. You know why.

I use a Tyan S1571S Titan Turbo AT-2 , it supports both edo and sdram , bus speeds to 83 mhz and in my case it over clocked my Intel 233 to a 250 (3 X 83) with out a problem with both sdram and edo. You can check it out at http://www.tyan.com . Oh yea the bios is easy to flash (upgrade) I have only used this board for about two months now and it has been problem free, except when i changed to sdram and then it was a memory problem not the boards. Denny M >I just wanted to get some opinions on available motherboards and any

>Intel chips are no longer as easily overclockable. They've disabled >the clock muliplier pin, limiting the speed options. Check out the >article on Tom's Hardware Guide (www.tomshardware.com). Damn, you're right. I tried to set the jumpers to 200MHz right away - nichts, nothing, rien, nada. :( Scratch my remarks about the overclockability of Intel chips. Well, anyway, the chip is now running at 2.5x75 MHz - quite stably, I might add from my first impression (well, Win 95 hasn't bought it within the last five minutes at least.) I didn't find the article you mentioned on Tom's page, just some outdated info on how Intel never really built in o/c protection ('cept in some P133s), although they threatened to do so in the past ... Is there any way to re-enable that option? Solder in a new pin, or cutting one that's there? I probably wouldn't have overclocked the chip to more than 188 on a regular basis, but I really bugs me I can't even try! -- Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome. wopr"at"stud.uni-sb.de \ There is no "2" in my real e-mail address. Uni des Saarlands \ Sorry for the inconvenience. You know why.