dionb wrote:Compensated for my bad luck with old hardware this week by buying an Asus P5A system. Not picking it up till the weekend, so don't know the revision, but regardless it's a board I've wanted since these things were new (even if I now know a late rev GA-5AA is technically better). Also getting a nice ATX desktop case (1998-era AOpen by the look of it), another Diamond Speedstar A50, either an early revision SB 64 PCI or a late Ensoniq AudioPCI, a PCI modem (yay...), fast CDRom and slow CDRW, a Compaq 15" v55 CRT and a (badly yellowed) Packard Bell keyboard. Oh, and an otherwise unspecified HDD running Windows 98 - which proved that it all works, at least well enough to boot to desktop.
Apart from the motherboard not really anything special, but can't wait to see if I can get my K6-3+ running at 720MHz (and if it's a rev. 1.05 or later, then see how to hard fix the slowdown bug)
I have three p5a-b boards and four p5a, all revisions. Tried two k6-3+ cpu's and two k6-2+. Getting any of these combinations with working cache above 630mhz i had zero luck. I also have the Gigabyte late revision (5.2), it is not better in any way as far as i know. Didn't even clock any higher as the Asus. It even was a fraction slower in benchmarks. The Gigabyte Ga5aa (baby at version) did a bit better but also slower as the p5a boards.
The absolute highest 3dmark scores i got from a 1.04 P5A-B
So good luck reaching 720mhz! Let me know if you got it.
asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1