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Asus TUSL2-C vs Abit ST6 which is better?

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First post, by Nemo1985

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Hello, I've bought some time ago the abit st6 which was in very bad conditions, probably kept in a barn with some water leakage, bulging caps and so on. I asked for a recap (polymod actually) and it was ready to get back on business.
Then a friend gave me a pc which inside I found the most wanted Socket 370 with intel chipset board the Asus, I so much regretted to have paid 40 eur for the abit...

Today I finally decided to do try them both, I decided to go with a Tualeron 1200mhz and then with a C3 cpu (just to check the compatibility) and in the end the fastest Tualatin around with a bit of overclock (bus 140mhz because after that new divisors come in place). Both motherboards have been tested with the latest bios available: 9P for the Abit and the 1014.001 beta for the Asus. Both motherboards have been tested with the tightest ram timings.

Long story short the Abit is always faster and the difference gets bigger with higher bus speed.
Memory performance are always better on the Abit

I've found the Abit more tricky and less stable than the Asus.
Asus bios is more complete but at the same time more sluggish to navigate, sometimes there is a consistent lag between the key pressed and the option being selected, the Abit bios has more voltage selection options for the cpu (no other overvolt options).
I also found that the cpu temperature reading on the Abit is bugged, it gave me crazy temperature values for the cpu while it was barely warm.

Both motherboards have annoying caps near the cpu socket but the Abit has a bit more space, probably because it use more caps but smaller size compared that the big crazy that are on the Asus. On the other hand the abit memory slot can be an hassle when a longer agp card is used at least the first 2 memory slots can't change the memory if the video card is in the agp slot.

I found the Asus to be more precise with the bus clock generation as can be seen on the following screens:

Abit 100.png
Asus 100.png
Abit 140.png
Asus 140.png

Reply 1 of 5, by The Serpent Rider

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Asus TUSL2-C is overall more well-rounded board for overclocking, because it can increase I/O and memory voltage via jumper. Abit ST6 can adjust only CPU voltage and even that is somewhat limited without pin modding, which is a big letdown after coming from BE6-II/BX133-RAID. Although you can undervolt CPUs on ABIT, which is not possible for ASUS.
But in terms of absolute possible CPU clock they should be more or less equal.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 2 of 5, by Nemo1985

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-04-09, 21:47:

Asus TUSL2-C is overall more well-rounded board for overclocking, because it can increase I/O and memory voltage via jumper. Abit ST6 can adjust only CPU voltage and even that is somewhat limited without pin modding, which is a big letdown after coming from BE6-II/BX133-RAID. Although you can undervolt CPUs on ABIT, which is not possible for ASUS.
But in terms of absolute possible CPU clock they should be more or less equal.

I didn't know that, but on the other hand I knew that the tusl2-c can't overvolt the tualatin cpus if it's anything less than rev 1.04

Reply 3 of 5, by nd22

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Abit ST6 is one of the best if not the best Intel 815 boards. That being said Tusl2-C is also one of the better boards. I would always expect an Abit board from the early 2000's to outperform a similar board based on the same chipset from other companies. Only after the socket 478/462 era did the other big companies caught up with Abit in respect with stock/overclock performance - I am pretty sure there were some other players that put up good boards but my experience with Asus/MSI/Gigabyte boards form that era left me with the impression that they were playing catch up with Abit. This is not meant to be an derogatory comment in respect to the others manufacturers.
Both of the boards are collectibles today so take good care of them.

Reply 4 of 5, by Nemo1985

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nd22 wrote on 2023-04-13, 06:11:

Abit ST6 is one of the best if not the best Intel 815 boards. That being said Tusl2-C is also one of the better boards. I would always expect an Abit board from the early 2000's to outperform a similar board based on the same chipset from other companies. Only after the socket 478/462 era did the other big companies caught up with Abit in respect with stock/overclock performance - I am pretty sure there were some other players that put up good boards but my experience with Asus/MSI/Gigabyte boards form that era left me with the impression that they were playing catch up with Abit. This is not meant to be an derogatory comment in respect to the others manufacturers.
Both of the boards are collectibles today so take good care of them.

Yep too bad that the tusl2-c died soon after that.

Reply 5 of 5, by The Serpent Rider

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If good overclocking is considered, not many choices here - ABIT ST6, Asus TUSL2-C and Gigabyte GA-6OXET. Everything else is mediocre at best.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

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