Feeling Nostalgic - Top 5 Motherboards

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AuxNuke

Gawd
Joined
Nov 11, 2001
Messages
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Hello All. I spent my 2 1/2 hr (whoops!) lunch break today meeting up with some friends from college and, after some beer and the normal chat about women, we got to talking about some of the retro motherboards that we spent many-a-night with back in the day. We came up with our own personal "Top 5" list of the motherboards that we found to be the most influential over our time. This list is not all inclusive, nor does it date back past 1998 or so... yet it does include the motherboards that we think defined "enthusiast" in their time and some of the reasons behind each one.

5) Asus CUSL2:

At the time of its release, this board was an enthusiasts dream come true. The lastest features, an incredibly stable intel i815 chipset, DDR 133mhz support, and best of all, a world of overclocking options enabled by Asus's BIOS. We were easily running our P3 cB0 700mhz cpu's at 950mhz or sometimes even near or slightly above the ominous 1ghz barrier. Overall, a great board and one of the first to show consistant stable overclocks.

4) Abit KT7 / KT7A

Who doesn't remember the time when just about everyone had this board in their rig? These boards included one of the first successful VIA chipsets, onboard IDE Raid, and a wealth of other features that virtually vaulted the Athlon Thunderbird into the eyes of enthusiasts everywhere. This board also helped to keep Abit at the top of the list of name brand enthusiast mainboards.

3) Abit BP6

So let me get this straight, 2 celerons perform better than my one Pentium 3??? Who would have ever thought that this board was going to be as sucessful as it was in the enthusiast market. The insane overclocks made this board a staple of multithreaded heaven for years to come. Most people upgraded their main system numerous times yet kept their trusty BP6 around as a "spare" or "backup" pc because it was too valuable in their mind to just get rid off.

2) Asus P2B

The one, the only, the legendary, P2B. At the heart of this beauty was the indestructable Intel 440BX chipset, powering Pentium 2's and 3's higher than ever before. Even though the board was rated at 100mhz, this jumpered wonder easily ran the 133mhz chips and was even able to further overclock those chips. Got a new 600mhz / 133fsb P3? Just throw it in your P2B and watch the benchmark scores absolutely crush all of the newer and "better" chipsets that came out for the P3 at the time.

1) Abit TH7II-RAID

What?!?!? A Rambus chipset is #1? YEP. It is impossible to find a motherboard that held the performance crown for longer than the TH7II. When this board was first released, it easily became the highest performing board / chipset for the P4... not to mention the overcloking possibilities. As time went on, newer chipsets were released (including DDR chipsets) and none were able to match the performance of the TH7II and i850 chipset. Even when 533fsb P4's started showing up, you were able to just slap some PC1066 Samsung Rambus into your trusty TH7II and rule the benchmark world again. I, like most [H]ard enthusiasts, tend to swap out my motherboard every 6 -12 months in favor of the latest and greatest. This motherboard still holds the record for remaining in my box for 1 month shy of 2 years while still being at or near the top of the performance charts.

You've heard my list... whats yours? ;) Thanx for reading and taking a walk down memory lane!

Aux
 
I'd have to give some thought to an entire list, but I'll agree with your #1 choice having owned one. Say what you want about RDRAM but that board *rocked*.
 
Theres no way I can go back far enough to remember 5 great mobo's but I have one for you.

A-Open AX6BX Pro II Millenium Edition (Pentium 3 board)

Ever get sick of everything PCB being Green? So did the gang at A-Open. This motherboard was black. A-Open essentially started the "trend" of different coloured mobo's which would also lead to coloured graphics cards etc...

OK, so its a small thing as the board itself was pretty basic but in a world where people care about the colours inside their perspex/windowed PC's its nice to know who got the ball rolling.
 
Well, I own two boards that are on the list and hopefully my DFI will live up to the hype and the positive reviews. Both my BP6 and KT7A-RAID are still running strong as Windows 2k and Fedora Core 3 boxes respectively pushing out conservative but rock-stable OC results and are currently folding in my farm...

Abit still pwnz for all time in my book although I have been pleased with a lot of other boards over the years from Tyan and Asus whose model numbers have escaped me. I still just after the thought of a dually Pentium Pro Tyan server board which, at the time, was complete unobtanium to me due to funding problems. ;)
 
Had the Abit KT7-RAID, with the AMD 760 chipset. Great board.

Also had the lesser-known but awesome Abit BM6. Single Socket 370 in a time where very few boards came that way.Started out supporting Mendocino-core Celerons, but with a BIOS flash went to supporting Coppermine Celeron/P3 chips. Ran my CuMine Celeron 566 at 850MHz and got P3 performance. The people who had this board had incredible luck with long-term CPU support, and with overclocking. Also the first time I used an Alpha PAL heatsink/fan (those were the days).

AOpen made awesome boards too (probably still does, but I haven't used them in a long time). Place I worked was an AOpen reseller, and their Socket 7/Super 7/Slot 1 boards were some of the most stable and reliable boards I've worked with.

ASUS P2B-F. Had it. Probably the single most solid Slot 1 mainboard ever made. Too bad ASUS now isn't quite what it was then, IMO. Only problem was the keyboard power-on option; we disabled that after having one or two boards short out their keyboard BIOS and urged customers not to use it.
 
The IT7-Max2 Ver. 2 was my favorite board. It had all kinds of onboard stuff like RAID/SATA/10 USB's. It was the first board I ever used that I didn't need to add a single PCI card to. I never should have sold it to my uncle.

 
Wait, you have the P2B and the BP6, and yet you neglect the BH6?!?! :eek: My dad had one of these for years, only got rid of it because of the caps- this was before they started repairing them.

Probably too new, but Asus' P4_800 boards (Intel chipset versions) all had some pretty impressive numbers for P4.
DFI LP NFII Ultra B will almost certainly go down in history for AXP overclocks.
For most impressive comeback, AOpen AK89-Max. It started out as an absolute shit-board, and then one BIOS upgrade made it THE K8 board to have until the second-gen chipsets came out.
 
I'll agree on the ASUS P2B. I had a P2B-F, the best motherboard I've ever owned.
 
AuxNuke said:
Hello All. I spent my 2 1/2 hr (whoops!) lunch break today meeting up with some friends from college and, after some beer and the normal chat about women, we got to talking about some of the retro motherboards that we spent many-a-night with back in the day. We came up with our own personal "Top 5" list of the motherboards that we found to be the most influential over our time. This list is not all inclusive, nor does it date back past 1998 or so... yet it does include the motherboards that we think defined "enthusiast" in their time and some of the reasons behind each one.

5) Asus CUSL2:

At the time of its release, this board was an enthusiasts dream come true. The lastest features, an incredibly stable intel i815 chipset, DDR 133mhz support, and best of all, a world of overclocking options enabled by Asus's BIOS. We were easily running our P3 cB0 700mhz cpu's at 950mhz or sometimes even near or slightly above the ominous 1ghz barrier. Overall, a great board and one of the first to show consistant stable overclocks.

4) Abit KT7 / KT7A

Who doesn't remember the time when just about everyone had this board in their rig? These boards included one of the first successful VIA chipsets, onboard IDE Raid, and a wealth of other features that virtually vaulted the Athlon Thunderbird into the eyes of enthusiasts everywhere. This board also helped to keep Abit at the top of the list of name brand enthusiast mainboards.

3) Abit BP6

So let me get this straight, 2 celerons perform better than my one Pentium 3??? Who would have ever thought that this board was going to be as sucessful as it was in the enthusiast market. The insane overclocks made this board a staple of multithreaded heaven for years to come. Most people upgraded their main system numerous times yet kept their trusty BP6 around as a "spare" or "backup" pc because it was too valuable in their mind to just get rid off.

2) Asus P2B

The one, the only, the legendary, P2B. At the heart of this beauty was the indestructable Intel 440BX chipset, powering Pentium 2's and 3's higher than ever before. Even though the board was rated at 100mhz, this jumpered wonder easily ran the 133mhz chips and was even able to further overclock those chips. Got a new 600mhz / 133fsb P3? Just throw it in your P2B and watch the benchmark scores absolutely crush all of the newer and "better" chipsets that came out for the P3 at the time.

1) Abit TH7II-RAID

What?!?!? A Rambus chipset is #1? YEP. It is impossible to find a motherboard that held the performance crown for longer than the TH7II. When this board was first released, it easily became the highest performing board / chipset for the P4... not to mention the overcloking possibilities. As time went on, newer chipsets were released (including DDR chipsets) and none were able to match the performance of the TH7II and i850 chipset. Even when 533fsb P4's started showing up, you were able to just slap some PC1066 Samsung Rambus into your trusty TH7II and rule the benchmark world again. I, like most [H]ard enthusiasts, tend to swap out my motherboard every 6 -12 months in favor of the latest and greatest. This motherboard still holds the record for remaining in my box for 1 month shy of 2 years while still being at or near the top of the performance charts.

You've heard my list... whats yours? ;) Thanx for reading and taking a walk down memory lane!

Aux
Click to expand...


I owned everyone of those boards aside from the last one.

My next addition to that list is just a personal one, I had a Intel Providence 440FX motherboard and dual Pentium Pro 180MHz chips OC'ed to 200MHz. This thing had it all, audio, 10/100 Lan, Ultra Wide SCSI EDIE, EDO DIMMS and of course two CPU sockets. I still have this board and she'll fire up like the day I bought it in 1996.

This board was a dream, with two Voodoo 2 12MB cards in SLi this system was an absolute powerhouse. At the time it had 192MB worth of EDO DIMMS in it and this system was ROCK solid. It's never locked up on my to this day. With the exception of the brief time I beta tested NT5.0 before it became known as Windows 2000.

After it was retired from gaming duties in mid to late 1997 it was kept as a NT Domain controller and file server. Today it sits in my closet still with OC'ed PPRO's on it.
 
bubblethumper said:
Max2? How about Max3?
Click to expand...
For its time, the max2 v 2 was kinda king o' the heap (i had a 2.0 at 3.2 on air without issues)
 
I'd have to chip in, Asus a7v

4 IDE channels, onboard sound. $120 back in the day.
 
LOVE the input guys, thanx!

Yeah some of the more recent boards have also been fantastic:
- IT7 Max2 V2 was running my 2.4 at insane heights
- IC7 (Max2,3) their whole line of products dominated the i875 sector. Another great from Abit

Keep the list growing!

~Aux
 
My top five:

5) MSI Neo2 Plat S939 - My current platform. It was an absolute fricking animal to set up, but once it got going there was no stopping the thing. Averages one work unit per day for Folding@Home.

4) Abit BX6 v2.0 Slot1 - a NIFTY board - it was really, really flexible, and way fast when you hooked it up to a cheapo Celeron 2. Even faster if you ran at 133 FSB.

3) Asus P3V4X Slot 1 - One of the single best P3 / Tualatin overclocking boards I have ever seen. Rock stable, tons of FSB options. BIOS could be better, but what the hell - it works.

2) Abit NF7-S R1.2 - Nice board, gobs of features, including dual channel DDR. Still kicks ass, even after two years.

1) Abit KR7A-133R - Say what you will about these guys, they were stable. They were also the first boards I ever ran past 166 MHz FSB. The KR7A-133R I had, in fact, went to 182 MHz FSB - even with the 4:2:1 divider as a limitation!!


Hall of shame:

5) Abit KA7 - Good thing I dumped it when I did. A simple upgrade coupled with an IRQ-hungry sound card and (eventually) bad capacitors becomes a nightmare from hell. And don't even try to run your slot-A TBird on the thing.

4) Soyo KT333 Dragon Lite - a KT333 chipset, and it has trouble maintaining stability at 133 Front side. Pathetic.

3) Asus CUV4X - Can somebody explain to me how Asus managed to build a board that couldn't even handle core voltages past 1.6? Total POS.

2) Intel i820 - a no brainer. Limited in RAM. Requires Rambus memory. Expensive, and it couldn't even out-perform its' older brother, i440BX.

1) FIC SD-11 - Yeah, smooth move, exlax. Develop a slot A platform for the low end of the market; then spec it out so the board is too big for most cases. Next, have the board be finicky about cheap power supplies. Lastly, provide no core voltage adjustment options. So much for your budget solution.
 
Another vote for the KT7-Raid... its still in my bro's system to this day. Unfortunatly I don't have enough experience with dozens and dozens of motherboards to say much about the others. But the KT7 served me well, and didn't give me any problems, even though it was a VIA.
 
Asus CUSL-2: Best PIII Coppermine Mobo out there, still to this day it runs

Asus A7V: My First AMD powered Motherboard. Had my Axia 1Ghz T-Bird on this thing... pure Goodness.... Stable as hell espically for VIA

Abit KT7A-RAID: My Enthusiast Dream Mobo with my AXIA :) Loved it
 
ABit KT7A - A classic and a great overclocker (especially with a 1GHz sold as seen for £5 Althon which did 1433 without batting an eyelid). One of Via's decent chipsets. Still going strong I believe.

MSI 865PE FI2SR - Rock stable, excellent overclocker and only recently retired due to the death of a 9800Pro. Additional Raid controller had a nice feature of 1xP-ATA port and 2x S-ATA. Pity about the flashing LED's on the Northbridge fan. Had the 'PAT' enabled version.b

Soyo 6BA+ (also 6BA-III and 6BA-IV) From back in the days when Soyo made decent boards. Took all types of abuse and still going strong (donated to a needy friend). Intel 440BX was a classic chipset, as I'm sure 865 and 875 will become.

Too early to say about my Asus A8N-SLI. Why is the RAM settings in CPU config and the CPU multiplier, voltage etc in Jumper Free? Just confuses people.

Hall of Shame

Asus P4P800-Deluxe Died a premature death, reason unknown (Power regulation I suspect).

Epox 8HKA+ - Great board but died and took out a stick of RAM (burnt one of the traces). Thankfully Crucial (UK) replaced it without question.

Anything by PC Chips / PC-Partner / Matsonic / PC-100 etc. Cheap and very nasty. HAd to troubleshoot too many systems with these in. Do people not wonder why these boards with all the features on but are cheaper than the main brands.

Boards which require proprietry parts (e.g. IBM PS/2, Compaq). Particular mention goes to Dell who use a standard ATX connector but wired in a non-standard way. :mad:

On a wider note:
Socket 423 boards - man you were suckered if you bought one of those. Worse performance than a P3 and a damm sight more expensive.

Creative Soundblaster live! - for years Creative blamed Via for issues between their card and VIA's chipsets. It was actually due to a rbroken ACPI header on the Live which was fixed in the Live 5.1 versions.

PowerVR (and Kryo) - nice idea, pity it didn't work very well. Always turned up a year late to the party.
 
I love the Asus P4P800 - I am running it now and its steady as a rock, got her back in 03.

The Asus CUV4X was a good board but now that machine keeps randomly rebooting itself. It worked fine with winme, but with winxp, it throws errors in the event viewer about not having proper acpi configuration after a random crash/reboot. Maybe the board is just going bad or overheating.
 
My favorite "OLD" motherboard was the Abit BE6 II (440bx chipset) I had great OC's with my coppermine P3 733MHz. That board was more than likly the easiest board to OC that I've ever owned. I Still have it too, and the P3 as well.
 
I'd have to say that my current board is number 1, I love it.

Chaintech APOGEE 7VJL
KT333 board, Running my 1800+ @ 166fsb rock stable (It doesn't officially support 333fsb although it will let you clock up to 250mhz bus....) 168 is crash-tastic.

It is black PCB with yellow PCI and DIMM slots.
I love this board!
 
newls1 said:
My favorite "OLD" motherboard was the Abit BE6 II (440bx chipset) I had great OC's with my coppermine P3 733MHz. That board was more than likly the easiest board to OC that I've ever owned. I Still have it too, and the P3 as well.
Click to expand...

How are the caps on it...mine were shite...

MD
 
Now I know its not old but for specific reasons for AMD setups I say the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. First to be hardcore 3.0Ghz +(record @ 3.8ghz) and made it really possible for AMD to compete and beat with Higher Oced Intel chips.(and FX55 and a Neo2 were pretty hard core ocers with Phase units.)
 
how can u guys leave out the a7n8x that board had absolutly everything you needed
 
Rasha said:
how can u guys leave out the a7n8x that board had absolutly everything you needed
Click to expand...

Agreed mah A7N8X-DLX is a kickass mobo... solid as a rock too
 
Oh man, my CUSL2 is still up and running. All it does now is play Solitaire for my parents. First board I ever bought and its outlasted several that I've bought since.

Gotta give another vote for the A7N8X as well. That board was loaded.
 
Nobody mentioned the Abit ST-6(ST-6R) yet.

Perhaps the best out of the i815 boards that fully supported Tualatins, if nothing more than for sheer tweakability and vcore options.

Got an AX6BC Pro Millenium edition off of ebay a few months ago, for like $25 shipped. Runs great, with an upgradeware slot one to tualatin adapter card. (Celeron 1.0@1333, may try higher someday, who knows)

Had an original P2B set up as a Netware file server for my dad, ran without a hitch with a Celeron300@450 for over 3 years straight now.
 
My favorite BX board was the MSI BXMaster...up to 8 IDE devices and all pci slots were bus-mastered....

I still have one sitting in the shop with a slot1 p3-800; thinking of building a retro rig to make use of the Aureal SQ2500 sound card :)
 
Yeah I have to give my NF7-S the nod for having freaking sweet features and the ability to push the mobile XP's to outbench my friend's A64 3200+ when he bought it. :) For the intel side I built 3 boxes off the IC7 line, 1 IC7, a G model, and a max 3, ugh they were pretty sexual oc'ers too, took those 2.4C's up to 3.2 without even a hiccup!

PS I'll freaking miss my soundstorm when its time to upgrade! :(
 
The Asus P2B ....... what a board .
The best one in my book easily , the king of Celeron 300A @ 504 mhz.
 
KT7 none raid is what i had!, i OC'd a duron 700 to 1.1GHz
i broke the GHz barrier with that mobo, great times.

that board is still in use even after numerious upgrades and 3 years strait of OCin its been upgraded to a duron 1300 and given to my younger brother lol
 
WOW! :cool: Thanx again for all of the replies!

You guys have added an awesome aspect to this thread, the "Hall of Shame" Section. I thought I'd add my 2 cents to the Hall of shame list:

4) MSI K7 Master-S
One of the first AMD 760 chipsets motherboards to support onboard SCSI. Super fast and feature rich... when it ever worked. Went through 3 boards and numerrous BIOS's before using it as a a coffee table.

3) Asus P3V4X
Home of the infamous 4 in 1 driver fiasco. Everything worked... just BALLS ASS slow. Did some transfer rate tests on the hard drive and came up with a whopping 2 mb/s read rate. Multiple new versions of the 4 -1 drivers and constant OS re-installs never solved the terrible IDE drivers with this system. This one ended up in a STATIC CREATING bag before sending back to Asus.

2) Epox 8KHA+
What kind of motherboard company would make a motherboard that would overclock Athlon Thunderbirds to CRAZY heights and then just absolutely SUCK at oc'ing or even BOOTING with an athlon XP. 4 different CPU's, 2 boards, 3 BIOS's, 2 Beta BIOS's, 1 new BIOS chip NEVER solved this freak of the the KT266A chipset. This one went up on my wall with a huge hook through it.

1) ECS K7VTA3
This steaming pile of trash made its way into my secondary computer back in the day after I had won it at a local computer show. This "prize" was the biggest mistake ever manufactured. I went through EACH motherboard version of this sack of shit, V3.X though V8.0 only to end up purposly pouring a beer directly onto the northbridge. ECS can send me me all the free motherboards they want and I'll be glad to video tape myself urinating on each one before wrapping it up in pig bladder and shipping it back.

~Aux
 
I forgot to add the K7pro and Gigabyte ga-7dx. Both wih amd chipsets, both with really, really good lifespans and performance. I never used Via northbridges in any amd platform I had, always stuck with AMD until I switched to intel computers.
 
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