Jasin Natael wrote on 2023-10-25, 15:26:Quite a bit of information to be had on the forum already, did a search but still unsure.
I have a Via C3 Nehemiah that I would […]
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Quite a bit of information to be had on the forum already, did a search but still unsure.
I have a Via C3 Nehemiah that I would like to use with and Intel Seattle 2440BX-2 motherboard.
What would be the cheapest compatible slotket to purchase?
I know that if I need to use a Tualatin I would need one of the fancier voltage selectable models.
But what if I only care about the VIA and possibly Coppermine P3's and Celerons?
Does anyone know of compatibility of this chip with this board?
I have the chip currently working fine in a socket 370 micro ATX board. I can't remember the model but it's a MSI Intel 810 board with no AGP/ISA.
It is doing the trick but I'd like to have the option to use it in one of my slot 1 boards, preferably the Intel as the others are VIA based.
The MSI board works great with all my Coppermine based P3's as well.
The Intel board I've only tested with Coppermine chips, but zero issues there as well.
Any and all information is appreciated. If these questions were already answered in another thread, than I apologize.
Out of the box, no i440 board is compatible with the VIA C3. Some models (Abit BE6, BH6, BX6 to name a few) are compatible with the C3 Samuel core with the latest bios, but performance and stability are a mixed bag.
VIA C3 chips are designed to work with VIA chipsets. Specifically, the Ezra core C3 is designed for the VIA 82C694X while the Nemiah is technically designed to work with the VIA 82C694T chipset, but it will also work ok in some i810 and some i815 boards (Abit ST6 for example).
Performance on the other hand... if the board does not directly support the chip, performance will be horrible. I got 400MB/sec read speeds in a MSI 694T master, witch does not support the C3 Nemiah, and over 900MB/s in an Epox EP-3VSA2.
Finding a compatible and stable board for a C3 is not easy, it takes trial an error, but your safest bet is a VIA 82C694T chipset motherboard, preferably the afformentioned EPOX, but there are board by Abit, Lucky Star, ECS, Gigabyte and Asus that are 100% compatible with it as well.
Experimenting with the i440bx + C3 combination can be fun, but it's also expensive, can be frustrating, and in my experience the results are noware near 694T boards. For examble my Abit BE6-II + MS-6905 slotket + Nemiah C3 1200MHz can do ~700MB/s memory read and 900mb/sec writes, and 3dmark scores are equivalent to a 600-650MHz pentium 3. In my Epox EP-3VSA2 memory performace is 30-35% better and so is gaming performance.