Decent board dying slot I
Written: Jan 21 '01 (Updated Jan 21 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Can handle Slot 1 at 133
Cons: Via chipset
The Bottom Line: One to buy if you still need a Slot1 motherboard at 133Mhz. Great everyday needs/light gaming. Against all motherboards just average. For it's class the Above Average rating.
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| brandle's Full Review: Asus P3V4X |
I recently came across a slot 1 Pentium 3 - 667 at 133Mhz and I had a 128MB stick of PC133 memory. So I needed a good motherboard to support the two. I had an older slot 1 motherboard made by EPoX which was absolutely great. Problem is that is would only support 66 or 100 Mhz memory and processors. Another problem is that the Slot 1 appears to be dying as quickly as it became the "new" processor mounting method.
There isn't much choice in the local shops for slot 1 board that also run at 133Mhz. So I did some looking and found this board in a local shop. I then went and checked it out on the internet. I saw that many people were having troubles with the VIA chipset and the drivers. I also saw reports of a few Bios problems.
The board I got was already flashed with the most current Bios. And I noticed that new VIA drivers were available to download. Tomshardware.com had this board listed in the usual benchmarking test for other boards like it. The Asus swept the initial field tests outperforming every other one in its class.
So, I bought it. So far no problems. I've got the BIOS rate set at 135 for the processor only slightly above the 133 Mhz normal rate. I'm running at 675Mhz with no problems or heat. Thanks to a utility that comes with the board you can check heat and all fan speeds. It will run in the background under windows and alert you when a fan chokes or heat builds up. It can also be set to change voltage and control the spin of your fans when heat builds up. This in addition to software cooling the main processor.
So far no problems. I plan to overclock it a little more when I get my fans set up again and see what it will do. I figure I can get at least 750 or more out of the P3. Which is pretty good since the chip already runs at such a high Mhz. It's not the overclocker dream chip or heavy gaming board though.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 115
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Epinions.com ID:
brandle
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Location: Tulsa, OK
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 5 members
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