In generalities, Aopen boards I have come across have been like Intel boards, work great, but not many user configurable options, and unlikely to support anything outside the tight official stated support. Gigabyte have more tendency to be reasonably flexible, maybe give you some control of voltage and timings. However, Gigabyte took a quality dive early on in the noughts, and I don't know whether this board is just before or just after that.

Chipset... A versions of VIA are always better than the non-A... basically you get the "fixed" version with some added capability.

Slot vs socket is irrelevant if you have access to a slocket.

What does matter:
- chipset
- available voltages

Can't comment on the voltages, but chipset is relevant. In terms of performance, a P3 1GHz is already a bit anaemic for Q3A/UT (I'm *just about* happy with UT on a P3-1400S and Voodoo3). So you need the fastest chipset you can get. ApolloPro133A is decent but not at BX/i815 levels and ApolloPro133 is a complete slug due to terrible memory performance. So from a performance perspective, you want the ApolloPro133A

But... what sound do you intend to use? If just the Orpheus any Via southbridge will be fine, but be aware that if one of the boards has a 686B southbridge, Soundblaster Live cards are not going to work (well).

Personably I'd go with Slot as it's a bit different lasting only a few years vs socket which is still around today.
but that's assuming all the technical issues above don't affect you or that 1 board simply behaves better then the other.
as the difference is minimal when all said and done

Anandtech reviews from back in the day..
https://www.anandtech.com/show/403
and lumped the slot 1 and 370 versions of Gigabyte
https://www.anandtech.com/show/491/20
Also a separate review from roundup mainly on slot 1 but keeps mentioning the 370
https://www.anandtech.com/show/507

Just to prove me wrong though, Aopen obviously retconned more FSB settings into their board than the Gigabyte has. 🤣

Awesome feedback, thanks so much all! So much more to chew on, so I'm still far from being able to make a decision. But it gives me more data so I'm closer than before.

I do like the idea of a Slot 1 for its unique place and its flexibility but then again the A revision of the chipset is probably a good bet.

@dionb I'll stick with the Orpheus for the time being. Maybe put in a SB Live! at some point but I don't really have the desire (yet--we all know when one domino falls they all eventually do).

The Apollo Pro 133'A' chipset of the Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X is substantially faster as pointed out by Dionb. Besides that it supports 1.5Gb RAM.

Having both in hand, I am thinking of going with the Socket 370. The faster chipset looks pretty nice to me.

Aside from that, I lost an hour or two on the Aopen while setting it up. Unresponsive system at first, thought it was a bum motherboard. Turned out the socket was just being finnicky--I decided to try one last reseat before giving up and that fixed it up, but the whole thing reminded me that the fewer points of failure the better off you are usually.

And then I got the Gigabyte today which welcomed me with several bulging caps...guess my soldering career begins here! New caps and a soldering kit are already on the way.

guyjin37 wrote on 2024-03-01, 07:31:

Having both in hand, I am thinking of going with the Socket 370. The faster chipset looks pretty nice to me.

Aside from that, I lost an hour or two on the Aopen while setting it up. Unresponsive system at first, thought it was a bum motherboard. Turned out the socket was just being finnicky--I decided to try one last reseat before giving up and that fixed it up, but the whole thing reminded me that the fewer points of failure the better off you are usually.

And then I got the Gigabyte today which welcomed me with several bulging caps...guess my soldering career begins here! New caps and a soldering kit are already on the way.

I prefer socket 370 as well. In fact it's my favorite retro PC base beacuse of it's flexibility and performance. Sure, you can stick a 1400MHz on a slot 1 motherboard using a slotket, but that gets expensive and limits you to FSB100 + AGP or FSB133 and a PCI video card. Lots of socket 370 boards also come with ISA, and there's also VIA C3 chips witch can be clocked on the fly.

I built PCs using both platforms. One uses an Abit BH6 / Pentium 3 1100MHz (SL5QW) / Geforce 3 Ti200 / Voodoo 2 / Guillemot Maxi Gamer 64, and the other is built around an Epox EP-3VSA2 + VIA C3 1200 + Voodoo 3 3000 + Awe64 value. The slot 1 build is nice and fast, and it can punch quite a bit above it's wieght. The socket 370 build can handle a wide variety of DOS games. The CPU can be slowed down to 266MHz (with or w/o cache enabled) or sped up to 1400MHz, witch gets me 386 dx-40 to pentium 3 750MHz performance levels, making it very, very flexible. It can also take a 1400MHz pentium 3-S if I want more performance, but even with the VIA cpu it can handle Unreal Tournament 99, quake 3 arena and other games with very playable speeds. My guess is you'd be more interested in this second build for it's flexibility.

Only reasons (to me) to do a slot 1 motherboard in my opinion is: If you want to run a Pentium II at some point or/and for a show piece system in a case that can show off the hardware.

To me the slot 1 system makes the most unique show piece system as it is unique in its design compared to the standard socket based motherboard that we had back then and still have today. If I'm making a retro system in a case where I want to show off the hardware then it its probably going to be a slot 1 system. Making a socket 370 or other socket based system as a show piece isnt really that much different then a new or current system look wise.... boring....

If you are going to just put it in a beige closed panel box where you never see the hardware then I would rather go with a socket 370 or other socket based system.

I mean I do have slot 1 systems in standard retro boxes but my fav systems to look at are the slot 1s in newer cases, as for just under the desk gaming machines my favs are my socket 370, socket A and socket 939 systems

Slot1 is nice for swapping CPUs out for testing, since you are taking the heatsink and fan out all on the same cartridge. It's like swapping out a Nintendo game (except the plastic is so brittle after all these years that you will probably explode your retention bracket swapping the CPU out).

But when you're building a system to use without any expectation of changing the CPU, the interface doesn't matter. And for the most part, Slot1 CPUs are very expensive compared to their socket counterparts. Socket 370 wins on cost and so you should choose it, all else equal, for a system you intend to use for retro computing.

From my experience the Intel BX440 motherboards are Rock Solid and Reliable. Where the 370 motherboards have problems.
Bad capacitors, Memory issues, USB, and bios problems.
The BX440 motherboards are EASY to setup where the 370 bios has allot more options and tweaks in the bios to setup and configure.

Thats my experience with the hardware.

Yeah the FCPGA2 era for late coppermine and tualatin ran into the beginning of the capacitor plague.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-03-02, 10:31:

From my experience the Intel BX440 motherboards are Rock Solid and Reliable. Where the 370 motherboards have problems. Bad capac […]
Show full quote

From my experience the Intel BX440 motherboards are Rock Solid and Reliable. Where the 370 motherboards have problems.
Bad capacitors, Memory issues, USB, and bios problems.
The BX440 motherboards are EASY to setup where the 370 bios has allot more options and tweaks in the bios to setup and configure.

Thats my experience with the hardware.

You're confusing chipset and slot/socket here. There are So370 BX boards (CUBX, BP6 etc) and there are Slot 1 non-BX boards (P3C2000, P3V4X, Thunder 2500 etc)

Slots 1 and socket 370 are just different form factors for exactly the same electrical signals.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2024-03-02, 10:31:

From my experience the Intel BX440 motherboards are Rock Solid and Reliable. Where the 370 motherboards have problems. Bad capac […]
Show full quote

From my experience the Intel BX440 motherboards are Rock Solid and Reliable. Where the 370 motherboards have problems.
Bad capacitors, Memory issues, USB, and bios problems.
The BX440 motherboards are EASY to setup where the 370 bios has allot more options and tweaks in the bios to setup and configure.

Thats my experience with the hardware.

My box'o'dead or dying slot 1 motherboards dissagrees with you.

If you got the right motherboard (like a Tyan S1854 for example) you can play with both. 😀

There are motherboards which can use both Slot 1 and Socket 370 CPU's (not at the same time of course). But those are not very common. Socket 370 is probably the most sensible/cheapest choice but I personally love Slot 1 boards for quickly swapping between CPU's.