Super Micro P3TDE6-G - Tualatin + 4 GB RAM + AGP. To be serious, I would either limit myself to 512 MB and a 815E motherboard (not sure why you want more - you will still be limited by the CPU) or go for one of the VIA Apollo boards.

If AGP performance is important then I think that rules out Serverworks, even if you got a good deal on one. I've never tried them but if I'm not mistaken they have a bad reputation with AGP. It wasn't a priority for them.

If you want it to work with much later AGP cards, including the cards with an Express based GPU and a bridge chip on them, then I think Intel P3 chipsets are the ones that have the best chance of working (never tried myself). If you want Intel with SDRAM memory that leaves you with the 815, which is okay but it has a 512MB memory limit and the boards don't have ISA. Keep in mind not all 815 chipsets/boards support Tualatin, so shop carefully.
If an Intel RAMBUS chipset is okay, then I don't have any idea about those options. Maybe there's something interesting there, no idea what the RAM costs nowadays.

If you are using only native AGP cards, then I like the VIA Apollo Pro 133T (VT82C694T). I had trouble with VIA in the days of the MVP3 and I think earlier Apollo Pro chipsets may have been buggy as well, but by the time of the 133A and 133T I think they were getting pretty decent. Normally I'd prefer Intel, but with the missteps and nerfing Intel was doing with their chipsets all through the P3 era, I'm left with the VIA 133T as my current favorite for a high end P3 desktop. VIA's P3 DDR chipsets are probably just as good.

The VIA 133T boards still support ISA slots and can have up to 2GB RAM (512MB per slot - 3 slots totaling 1.5GB is more common). Officially you're not supposed to use more than 3 DIMMs at PC133 speed.

The big caveat about the VIA 133T is I have doubts about it's compatibility with late AGP cards.
I've had problems with a VIA 133A based board having major glitches with an nVidia 7600GS. I believe (not totally proven) that the problem is that it's a bridged AGP card. I believe the VIA 133T is very similar to the 133A, just with the addition of Tualatin support, so it likely has the same issue. I remember reading of other people having similar problems, so I think it's a general problem between these chipsets and bridged cards.
I think these VIA P3 chipsets probably only work properly with native AGP cards, which on the nVidia side means a 6800GT/Ultra at max. The nVidia 6600 cards and all 7xxx and above are bridged. I won't try to comment on ATI, don't even know if they have the same issue or not.

If you care about being able to use such late AGP cards that use an Express->AGP bridge chip with a Tualatin P3 then the Intel 815 might be the only option. But if that's not a concern, then I'd consider VIA boards.

I'm not sure what specific Tualatin boards to recommend that have good caps - bad caps are almost universal at that point in time. Asus probably still had good caps but I don't know any boards to mention.

If you insist on going more than 512MB RAM, I would go with BX (Asus P3B-F, P2B late revisions etc) with modified slocket. Most Geforce cards work well with 89 MHz AGP bus and BX is the fastest you can get. i840 dual slot 1 and dual channels RAMBUS would be faster but I have yet to see dual i840 work with Tualatins. Not sure if there was a single i840 Slot 1 board?

With out a doubt the Abit ST6 and VH6T models. The VH6T is slightly faster and has an ISA slot, while the ST6 overclocks a little better.

ABIT VH6T:

ABIT ST6:

Another great board is the Asus TUSL2-C. These are pretty solid - worst case scenario it will have a little capacitor rot, (pretty rare - they come with good rubycon caps) but it uses common low-esr 1500uf 6.3v caps witch are cheap and easy to source.

All board support 1.5gb of ram.

Paadam wrote:

If you insist on going more than 512MB RAM, I would go with BX (Asus P3B-F, P2B late revisions etc) with modified slocket. Most Geforce cards work well with 89 MHz AGP bus and BX is the fastest you can get. i840 dual slot 1 and dual channels RAMBUS would be faster but I have yet to see dual i840 work with Tualatins. Not sure if there was a single i840 Slot 1 board?

OP asked about tualatin boards, witch these are not. They do not support tualatin CPUs out of the box, and some (440bx) don't even officially support FSB 133 needed for the 1400MHz Pentium III. @OP - stay away from 440BX boards if you plan on using 133MHz fsb - they do not support 1/2 AGP multiplier needed for 133mhz fsb and 66mhz AGP operation (only 1/1 and 2/3). If you get one of these you'll be stuck with either 100MHz FSB or a PCI video card. Besides, finding a slotket and modding it will cost more $, take more time, is riskier and more trouble then it's worth.

If you do plan to use a board that does not natively support tualatin CPUs, find a VIA Apollo 133 board (VIA 82C693A) with adjustable voltage and mod the CPU (pretty easy to do - it involves coating 3 pins with electrically insulating paint). The IWill VA133Plus and Asus CUV4X are good candidates. The Iwill has jumpers for setting voltage and it supports 1.45v needed for a tualatin CPU so there's no risk of posting at 2v and cooking the CPU.

ABit boards from this time will have bad caps unless somebody has already recapped it. Asus usually had good caps, but I think they slipped at some point, not sure.

The 440BX is awesome but converting such a board to run a 1.4GHz Tualatin P3-S isn't guaranteed. Many people have certainly done it but not all 440BX boards are stable at 133FSB, and with such a high end CPU you're really pushing the board's limits. There's also the need to do some modding as was mentioned.
The overclocked AGP on a BX133 board isn't much of an issue, it's easy to find AGP cards that can handle 89MHz. 440BX AGP is limited to 3.3v though, so it won't work with later cards. The problem I've run into once or twice with BX@133 is with PCI, not AGP. Some 440BX boards don't expose the 1/4 PCI setting or don't document it correctly, but most (at least the later ones) do. It's easy to end up with PCI @ 44MHz which is unreliable.
Basically the experience of using a BX with what you're trying to do is that it can work, but you're tweaking and pushing things to do more than what they're really "supposed" to do. If that's appealing, then go for it. If you do want to run a 440BX setup, look for a late 440BX board that was produced when overclocking to 133FSB had become commonplace and almost expected. Modding for the Tualatin would still be needed.

The VIA 694X (133A) and 694T (133T) have a universal AGP slot (1.5v) and support a 1/2 ratio so that pushes the compatibility barrier up higher, probably up through the last native AGP cards (6800GT/Ultra). 440BX is 3.3v only.

These boards are going to be almost 15 years old. they will ALL have bad caps by now. This is a fact of life.

My tualatin setup uses one of these boards: http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunderheslt.html

THAT is a motherboard with chest hair!

shamino wrote:

If AGP performance is important then I think that rules out Serverworks, even if you got a good deal on one. I've never tried t […]
Show full quote

If AGP performance is important then I think that rules out Serverworks, even if you got a good deal on one. I've never tried them but if I'm not mistaken they have a bad reputation with AGP. It wasn't a priority for them.

If you want it to work with much later AGP cards, including the cards with an Express based GPU and a bridge chip on them, then I think Intel P3 chipsets are the ones that have the best chance of working (never tried myself). If you want Intel with SDRAM memory that leaves you with the 815, which is okay but it has a 512MB memory limit and the boards don't have ISA. Keep in mind not all 815 chipsets/boards support Tualatin, so shop carefully.
If an Intel RAMBUS chipset is okay, then I don't have any idea about those options. Maybe there's something interesting there, no idea what the RAM costs nowadays.

If you are using only native AGP cards, then I like the VIA Apollo Pro 133T (VT82C694T). I had trouble with VIA in the days of the MVP3 and I think earlier Apollo Pro chipsets may have been buggy as well, but by the time of the 133A and 133T I think they were getting pretty decent. Normally I'd prefer Intel, but with the missteps and nerfing Intel was doing with their chipsets all through the P3 era, I'm left with the VIA 133T as my current favorite for a high end P3 desktop. VIA's P3 DDR chipsets are probably just as good.

The VIA 133T boards still support ISA slots and can have up to 2GB RAM (512MB per slot - 3 slots totaling 1.5GB is more common). Officially you're not supposed to use more than 3 DIMMs at PC133 speed.

The big caveat about the VIA 133T is I have doubts about it's compatibility with late AGP cards.
I've had problems with a VIA 133A based board having major glitches with an nVidia 7600GS. I believe (not totally proven) that the problem is that it's a bridged AGP card. I believe the VIA 133T is very similar to the 133A, just with the addition of Tualatin support, so it likely has the same issue. I remember reading of other people having similar problems, so I think it's a general problem between these chipsets and bridged cards.
I think these VIA P3 chipsets probably only work properly with native AGP cards, which on the nVidia side means a 6800GT/Ultra at max. The nVidia 6600 cards and all 7xxx and above are bridged. I won't try to comment on ATI, don't even know if they have the same issue or not.

If you care about being able to use such late AGP cards that use an Express->AGP bridge chip with a Tualatin P3 then the Intel 815 might be the only option. But if that's not a concern, then I'd consider VIA boards.

I'm not sure what specific Tualatin boards to recommend that have good caps - bad caps are almost universal at that point in time. Asus probably still had good caps but I don't know any boards to mention.

I notice Athlon boards seemed to have more chances of bad caps than Pentium III boards, so I go with the Tualatin. I'll be using Windows XP with this build and XP will benefit with more ram. As for AGP I stay period correct on all my systems. So I'll think on putting something Geforce2 Ti or similar in mine.

kanecvr wrote:

OP asked about tualatin boards, witch these are not. They do not support tualatin CPUs out of the box, and some (440bx) don't even officially support FSB 133 needed for the 1400MHz Pentium III. @OP - stay away from 440BX boards if you plan on using 133MHz fsb - they do not support 1/2 AGP multiplier needed for 133mhz fsb and 66mhz AGP operation (only 1/1 and 2/3). If you get one of these you'll be stuck with either 100MHz FSB or a PCI video card. Besides, finding a slotket and modding it will cost more $, take more time, is riskier and more trouble then it's worth.

If you do plan to use a board that does not natively support tualatin CPUs, find a VIA Apollo 133 board (VIA 82C693A) with adjustable voltage and mod the CPU (pretty easy to do - it involves coating 3 pins with electrically insulating paint). The IWill VA133Plus and Asus CUV4X are good candidates. The Iwill has jumpers for setting voltage and it supports 1.45v needed for a tualatin CPU so there's no risk of posting at 2v and cooking the CPU.

Yes, I understood that, butsince there is no faster native Tualatin board that would be easily obtainable, BX is still a viable option. I already told in my first post here that 89 MHz AGP is the only issueand that is mostly NOT an issue with nvidia cards. My V5 5500 AGP runs happily at 89 Mhz AGP bus with PIII-S 1400 MHz on Asus P3B-F. If you talk about "official" incompatibilities like AGTL vs AGTL+ then that is a total joke: even Intel official datahseets have tolerances for voltages that neglect the difference (1.25v vs 1.5v bus voltage). I have modified tens of slockets for Tualatins, even original PPGA ones though these require more modding.
If you don't feel comfortable using Tualatin on BX then fine but I would NEVER run it on VIA chipset, just because they are buggy and slow.

kanecvr wrote:

With out a doubt the Abit ST6 and VH6T models. The VH6T is slightly faster and has an ISA slot, while the ST6 overclocks a litt […]
Show full quote

With out a doubt the Abit ST6 and VH6T models. The VH6T is slightly faster and has an ISA slot, while the ST6 overclocks a little better.

ABIT VH6T:

ABIT ST6:

Another great board is the Asus TUSL2-C. These are pretty solid - worst case scenario it will have a little capacitor rot, (pretty rare - they come with good rubycon caps) but it uses common low-esr 1500uf 6.3v caps witch are cheap and easy to source.

All board support 1.5gb of ram.

Paadam wrote:

If you insist on going more than 512MB RAM, I would go with BX (Asus P3B-F, P2B late revisions etc) with modified slocket. Most Geforce cards work well with 89 MHz AGP bus and BX is the fastest you can get. i840 dual slot 1 and dual channels RAMBUS would be faster but I have yet to see dual i840 work with Tualatins. Not sure if there was a single i840 Slot 1 board?

OP asked about tualatin boards, witch these are not. They do not support tualatin CPUs out of the box, and some (440bx) don't even officially support FSB 133 needed for the 1400MHz Pentium III. @OP - stay away from 440BX boards if you plan on using 133MHz fsb - they do not support 1/2 AGP multiplier needed for 133mhz fsb and 66mhz AGP operation (only 1/1 and 2/3). If you get one of these you'll be stuck with either 100MHz FSB or a PCI video card. Besides, finding a slotket and modding it will cost more $, take more time, is riskier and more trouble then it's worth.

If you do plan to use a board that does not natively support tualatin CPUs, find a VIA Apollo 133 board (VIA 82C693A) with adjustable voltage and mod the CPU (pretty easy to do - it involves coating 3 pins with electrically insulating paint). The IWill VA133Plus and Asus CUV4X are good candidates. The Iwill has jumpers for setting voltage and it supports 1.45v needed for a tualatin CPU so there's no risk of posting at 2v and cooking the CPU.

I've encountered nothing but pain from the 693A chipset.

If you want the absolute fastest Tualatin system, you'll need a motherboard based on the Apollo Pro 266T. This chipset easily outperforms i815 and smashes its 512MB RAM limit. And if you're made of money, dual CPU Pro266T motherboards are available as well. 😀

I have single-proc Pro266T system and am very happy with it. It's stable and works very well with relatively modern hardware. Unlike the older Apollo133/694T chipsets, it's completely stable running graphics cards at 4x AGP. It's set up with a:

-QDI Advance 12T motherboard
-PIII-S @ 1575
-2GB PC3200 @ 300MHz/2-2-2-6
-evga 6800GT
-XFi XtremeMusic
-XP SP3

Doom 3 @ 1024x768 "Ultra" preset:

Crysis @ 800x600 Low DX9 preset:

3DMark 2001SE:

3DMark 2003:

3DMark 2005:

computergeek92 wrote:

I notice Athlon boards seemed to have more chances of bad caps than Pentium III boards, so I go with the Tualatin.

If that's the reason for picking Tualatin over Athlon, then I think it's misguided. The best way to avoid bad caps (other than replacing them yourself) is to find a board where you can see what kind of caps it has. Quality caps even today will most likely still be good and stay that way for a long time. Junk caps will be bad, or at least will die quickly when they start getting stressed.

If you don't mind going forward in time a bit, an ABit NF7-S v2.0 or an ABit AN7 typically have Rubycon caps, which are very good. Look at pictures though - that was right at the time when they switched suppliers. Earlier built boards still had junk caps on them. Obviously no ISA on those boards though. They can run pretty much any socket-A CPU.

Going back to 440BX boards, the Asus P2B and P3B series boards had good caps also, and they were more conservative than the caps that became necessary by the time of the late Athlon era, so in theory they might last longer (but the boards are also older, so...) Problem with these boards is that they tend to be expensive, and of course the various 440BX considerations that were already mentioned.

Unfortunately I haven't had enough exposure to Tualatin boards to know any with good caps, other than boring OEM stuff that you probably don't want. Honestly I have to say the same for ISA-equipped early socket-A - I'm sure some quality capped boards were made but I don't know which ones. I wouldn't rule out all boards of either architecture though, just examine them case by case.

My Tualatin board is a Shuttle AV18E2 which I like, but it needed recapping. It's original caps were some junk (don't remember what kind of junk exactly, but they were junk).
You've probably heard it before, but the best thing you can do is develop the ability to replace caps yourself. That way they won't be such a problem anymore.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

If you want the absolute fastest Tualatin system, you'll need a motherboard based on the Apollo Pro 266T. This chipset easily ou […]
Show full quote

If you want the absolute fastest Tualatin system, you'll need a motherboard based on the Apollo Pro 266T. This chipset easily outperforms i815 and smashes its 512MB RAM limit. And if you're made of money, dual CPU Pro266T motherboards are available as well. 😀

I have single-proc Pro266T system and am very happy with it. It's stable and works very well with relatively modern hardware. Unlike the older Apollo133/694T chipsets, it's completely stable running graphics cards at 4x AGP. It's set up with a:

-QDI Advance 12T motherboard
-PIII-S @ 1575
-2GB PC3200 @ 300MHz/2-2-2-6
-evga 6800GT
-XFi XtremeMusic
-XP SP3

Doom 3 @ 1024x768 "Ultra" preset:

PIII-DDR-Doom3.PNG

Crysis @ 800x600 Low DX9 preset:

PIII-DDR-CrysisLow.png

3DMark 2001SE:

PIII-DDR-3D01.png

3DMark 2003:

PIII-DDR-3D03.png

3DMark 2005:

PIII-DDR-3D05.png

Great! 😀 Looks like we have a winner for the best all around Tualatin chipset! Do tell me, what are some good boards with this chipset? No 440BX for me. I don't overclock anything cause I want my computers to outlive me.. HAHA

shamino wrote:

If that's the reason for picking Tualatin over Athlon, then I think it's misguided. The best way to avoid bad caps (other than […]
Show full quote

computergeek92 wrote:

I notice Athlon boards seemed to have more chances of bad caps than Pentium III boards, so I go with the Tualatin.

If that's the reason for picking Tualatin over Athlon, then I think it's misguided. The best way to avoid bad caps (other than replacing them yourself) is to find a board where you can see what kind of caps it has. Quality caps even today will most likely still be good and stay that way for a long time. Junk caps will be bad, or at least will die quickly when they start getting stressed.

If you don't mind going forward in time a bit, an ABit NF7-S v2.0 or an ABit AN7 typically have Rubycon caps, which are very good. Look at pictures though - that was right at the time when they switched suppliers. Earlier built boards still had junk caps on them. Obviously no ISA on those boards though. They can run pretty much any socket-A CPU.

Going back to 440BX boards, the Asus P2B and P3B series boards had good caps also, and they were more conservative than the caps that became necessary by the time of the late Athlon era, so in theory they might last longer (but the boards are also older, so...) Problem with these boards is that they tend to be expensive, and of course the various 440BX considerations that were already mentioned.

Unfortunately I haven't had enough exposure to Tualatin boards to know any with good caps, other than boring OEM stuff that you probably don't want. Honestly I have to say the same for ISA-equipped early socket-A - I'm sure some quality capped boards were made but I don't know which ones. I wouldn't rule out all boards of either architecture though, just examine them case by case.

My Tualatin board is a Shuttle AV18E2 which I like, but it needed recapping. It's original caps were some junk (don't remember what kind of junk exactly, but they were junk).
You've probably heard it before, but the best thing you can do is develop the ability to replace caps yourself. That way they won't be such a problem anymore.

I had an Abit NF7 2.0 once. (Not the SATA version) It was too buggy and cruddy when it ran, but I think that was due to it being a faulty board. My tech friend says the earlier NF7s were better.

Food for thought, I would go for an Athlon XP board, but i'm far too paranoid of bad caps. 😵 I don't know how to solder anything at all and my buddies are far too busy to spare time to recap boards for me. I try not to collect anything newer than millennial hardware because I want computers that will last me the longest. Cause everyone knows the old stuff was more long lived anyway. On side note, I sold an MSI K7T Turbo2 based system to a friend and the caps were not bulged. I found it in a system abandoned by some dumpster. It looked like someones old workhorse that never failed before it got too obsolete. If only I could tell good brand caps just by looking at them but I have this naiveness about me... 🤣

Personally I think choosing anything other than an Intel chipset defeats the whole purpose with a PIII performance build. If you can accept other chipsets' quirks, an Athlon XP build means much better performance at a lower price point. My KT133A/XP 2400+ build eats anything PIII for breakfast when it comes to that, and it also got ISA for late DOS games.

Since I really want ISA in systems from that time, 440BX is the only viable alternative for a PIII build in my book. Sadly I don't have much experience of Tualatin on 440BX, so I'll have to leave giving specific board/slotket/FCPGA2 adapter suggestions to other members of the forums.

Being able to replace caps is almost a must have skill when dealing with ancient hardware. Even the best possible quality electrolytic caps are to be considered perishable, sooner or later you'll have to recap any motherboard, no matter of used capacitor brands/series, and if you ask me, it's better to do it sooner than later, before they go boom and take other stuff with them.