sgt76 wrote:

I still have it...it's currently in my P3 retro rig- which is supposed to be my "final" P3 rig but I'm actually on the lookout f […]
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I still have it...it's currently in my P3 retro rig- which is supposed to be my "final" P3 rig but I'm actually on the lookout for a nice 440BX/ 815 mobo...then it's rebuild time again.

OK, to summarize my experience with it-

1) its very picky with add-on pci cards - sound, usb and video cards. These usually cause the system to slow down to a crawl which I thought at first to be incompatibility with Coppermine chips and
2) it's noticeably slower and less stable than 440bx/ 815 chipset motherboards.

Back in the day, I too never had a VIA chipset . All the others were OEM- HP Vectra VL600 (840 RDRam - woot!), IBM 300PL (440BX) and Dell Dimension 4100 (815). They were great. Come to think of it, I might just scrap the idea of rebuilding my home-made and get one of these old OEMs instead.

I'd say get a slot 1 for BX or a s370 for 815. Theres a couple slot 1's made with the i810 chipset but only one with the 815. Theres plenty 133mhz fsb mobo's made with the VIA chipsets. For VIA's sake, I'm still kinda hoping their newer P3 chipsets are a lil better.

I did find it being slower then BX or i815 in superpi, about 10%-ish.
That chipset has ONE advantage though, it's more compatible with what RAm you plug into it. It can take high density RAM and works with more then 512MB RAM. BX works with more then 512MB but only works with low density RAM. i815 is the fastest but won't work with more then 512MB