My personal favorites are;

Aquarius / Vision Technologies MB-4DUVC and MB-4DUPM. The DUVC is a VLB board with the UMC 8498 chipset, the 4DUPM is a PCI/VLB board with the UMC 8886 chipset. Older VLB boards don't usually have onboard I/O, the PCI ones I am listing all have onboard IDE/COM etc.

There are boards out there such as the JK-042A (No idea who made it, Wan Hung Lo I guess) which are basically the same as the 4DUV and if you avoid the PCChips ones with fake cache, these are usually good. In fact, if you can get one with 3.45V support, they can run an AMD X5 and keep up with a PCI system pretty nicely. Possibly even beat a PCI board at higher BUS clocks. Seems most of them also run the Pentium OverDrive just fine as well.

Most people swear by the Bioteq MB-8433UUD. I don't like it personally, but there's nothing wrong with it. Essentially the same (in function) as the 4DUPM but without VLB slots, you wouldn't need them as the 8881/8886 has a real PCI implementation instead of a cheap bridge.

MSI MS-4144, a reasonably fast PCI board based on the SiS 496 chipset. Doesn't have the best CPU support, but it does run DX4WB chips from AMD at least and the PCI implementation is actually pretty good.

DTK PKM 0038s - I think this is an older VLB board, but pretty good for an SX, DX or even a DX2 system. I ran one briefly years ago and it was solid... Actually, I kinda miss it and they do come up from time to time, but I guess I like my DUV better.

Believe it or not, the PCChips M919 is meant to be OK, just be weary of the cache module as they are proprietary and expensive, you would probably never find one. Never used this board myself so this one isn't from my personal recommendations. I will have to get one eventually though because I am reverse-engineering the cache module so copies can be made cheaper, they are not very complicated.

PCChips m912 w/real cache is pretty good. VLB, wide cpu support, CR2032 button cell battery support.

My favorite PCI 486 board is Acer AP43, quite flexible too. Very fast, but clearly far from being fastest - UMC chip set holds the crown.

I also like Zida 4DPS or PCI-400 in case of low budget.

I think you can't go wrong with a VLB motherboard based on an SiS or UMC chipset. The DTK/Gemlight board mentioned earlier is a good one, but you should be good if you go with any name brand manufacturer. I normally don't recommend OEM boards though, as they have limited BIOS settings.

Personally I prefer the ones with coin cell battery and a PS/2 mouse connector. PCI or VLB is much less of an issue to me, having to rig the battery with soldering is much more hassle then ending up with a system that is slower (I do like it being stable though, to me that's much more important than speed).

FIC 486-VIP-IO -> not the fastest but the most comfortable to use by far. It has PCI, ISA and VLB, a coin cell battery and working PS/2. I also like the popular Biostar MB8433UUD - just stay away from REV 1 - PS/2 doesn't really work on it. There's also the PINE PT-423b - great board and there's a version that has PS/2 as well.

I prefer the ASUS VL/I-486SV2GX4, a late ISA/VLB board which supports all types of 486 CPUs. It does not have PCI slots, but then again I believe a 486 should be VLB! It has superb performance, coin cell battery and it features a PS/2 mouse connector, the latter is not very common on 486 boards.

My favourite is the Gigabyte GA-586AM/S becaue... well its the one I have and it works

kanecvr wrote:

FIC 486-VIP-IO -> not the fastest but the most comfortable to use by far. It has PCI, ISA and VLB, a coin cell battery and working PS/2. .

And 72pin SIMMs, and onboard voltage regulator, and support for HDDs up to 8GB. In addition, the manual and latest BIOS (requires EPROM programmer for certain versions) are still available from FIC support website.

It has about 50 or so jumpers to set correctly up to make it work, but most of the 486 boards were like that, anyway. 🤣

I also like the Asus VL/I-486SV2GX4 (have one myself that is currently performing its duty as my main 486 rig with an AMD 486DX4-100).
I also have the Asus PVI-486SP3 motherboard which has one VLB slot and PCI slots (apart from the standard ISA slots).