I like Asus for single slot. Some like P2B-S include on board Adaptec UW scsi....

It would be better if you defined best. Best means different things to different people. So It's hard to entertain, since everyone has an opinion about it.

One way to define best is features. So you mentioned scsi and dual lan, as well as dual socket. These would of been premium features in their day.

They however are pointless features for retro gaming, and SSDs and Sata have made scsi irrelevant. So to different people these features do not make something

best or worst.

There are a lot of great BX boards, but the one things that separates good BX boards from great BX boards are their revision numbers. P2B boards and their variants are famous for being good boards but the great P2B boards are the late revisions.

Warlord wrote on 2023-01-12, 03:21:

It would be better if you defined best. Best means different things to different people. So It's hard to entertain, since ever […]
Show full quote

It would be better if you defined best. Best means different things to different people. So It's hard to entertain, since everyone has an opinion about it.

One way to define best is features. So you mentioned scsi and dual lan, as well as dual socket. These would of been premium features in their day.

They however are pointless features for retro gaming, and SSDs and Sata have made scsi irrelevant. So to different people these features do not make something

best or worst.

There are a lot of great BX boards, but the one things that separates good BX boards from great BX boards are their revision numbers. P2B boards and their variants are famous for being good boards but the great P2B boards are the late revisions.

"best" means to be perfect in all, or at least, most aspects.

asus p3b-f

noshutdown wrote on 2023-01-12, 03:48:

"best" means to be perfect in all, or at least, most aspects.

A board can be ideal for a given use case, so lets pretend a person needs a board to have 3 ISA slots. Which is a desirable feature around here not found on so called best boards. So if a board doesn't have 3 isa slots its not perfect in most aspects.

Theres a thread on here that says something like "Coolest socket 7 board you have never heard of" It's a pretty cool board but its certainly not without its flaws, but to the member who owns it, it is perfect to them and thats all that really matters.

noshutdown wrote on 2023-01-12, 03:48:

Warlord wrote on 2023-01-12, 03:21:

It would be better if you defined best. Best means different things to different people. So It's hard to entertain, since ever […]
Show full quote

It would be better if you defined best. Best means different things to different people. So It's hard to entertain, since everyone has an opinion about it.

One way to define best is features. So you mentioned scsi and dual lan, as well as dual socket. These would of been premium features in their day.

They however are pointless features for retro gaming, and SSDs and Sata have made scsi irrelevant. So to different people these features do not make something

best or worst.

There are a lot of great BX boards, but the one things that separates good BX boards from great BX boards are their revision numbers. P2B boards and their variants are famous for being good boards but the great P2B boards are the late revisions.

"best" means to be perfect in all, or at least, most aspects.

Well, then it needs to have two slots, six PCI slots, five ISA slots, both good onboard VGA and an AGP slot, lots of other onboard stuff and absolutely no onboard stuff, etc etc. A lot of these things are obviously mutually exclusive.

Define your aspects, or "best" means nothing, or rather: what everyone's personal subjective favorite is, which isn't any measure of quality but just a pop poll.

I used a Gigabyte GA-6BXD with dual P3-450's as my main system for many years. It was rock solid. The customisation options/overclocking ability (or lack of ) may not place it as other peoples 'best', but for me, as my only computer (dual booting Linux and Windows 2000) from 1999-2003 (ish) it was brilliant.

dionb wrote on 2023-01-12, 08:51:

or rather: what everyone's personal subjective favorite is, which isn't any measure of quality but just a pop poll.

yeah i think thats it: as long as you "think" its the best, its ok.
but it would be better if you could give some explanations on what makes you think so.

Dual Slot 1: Asus P2B-D/S

Single Slot 1: Asus P3B-F

Single slot 1. Intel's own SE440BX. Yes is limited bios options, but I'm not into overclocking and its quality components and a rock stable board on an already stable chipset. I only own the OEM variants which are ok but the Gateway's onboard SoundBlaster64 isn't great. I would have included Dells if the onboard YMF sound worked in dos and if it had standard ATX, but it doesn't so miss out on my list.

Dual slot 1
Asus P2B-DS
Dual CPU's are already pointless so if your going to build a 2 CPU rig may as well go totally crazy with SCSI, stupid amounts of RAM and the Asus P2B range is pretty famous as far as BX boards go
Something like the Tyan Thunder 100 Pro cloud be better. onboard Vibra16 for dos gaming sounds nice, but haven't had a chance to play around with one in real life

S370 I don't really associate with S370. different chipsets exist that are more interesting IMHO

MSI MS-6168v2.

Onboard Voodoo3, nice compacy uATX form factor, can run Tualatin and overclock to 133MHz FSB and ISA slot for nicer DOS sound than the onboard ES1373 "Sound Blaster" PCI.

Or Abit BP6

Dual Mendocino. No other board does dual Mendocino natively.

Or AOpen AX6BC Pro II Millennium Edition

Because black is beautiful.

The best BX-Board is the Abit BH6. Because that's what I (and everybody around me) had back then together with the Celeron 300@450. The only time when I had a high-end system.
As others have already said, there is no 'best' apart from such subjective aspects.

I liked some of the last BX boards that had "official" 133MHz support...like the Abit BF6, BX133, Asus CUBX and Gigabyte BX2000.

the most overlooked board of the bunch MSI BX Master 3.0. slot 1 version of cubx
https://www.anandtech.com/show/556/11

I'll suggest the 440BX boards with the following characteristics:

Front-side Bus stable/capable of at least 133MHz
Unlikely to need capacitors replaced in 2023
Compatible with most active or passive slotket adapters without voltage modifications
Compatible with the Korean seller's Tualatin Pentium III/Celeron modifications (must have a capable slotket, though)

Asus P2B-F
AOpen AX6BC

Meatball wrote on 2023-01-12, 18:41:

Unlikely to need capacitors replaced in 2023

🤣 that basically rules out everything. Even if their not bulging, theyre guaranteed to be way out of spec.

Warlord wrote on 2023-01-12, 19:17:

Meatball wrote on 2023-01-12, 18:41:

Unlikely to need capacitors replaced in 2023

🤣 that basically rules out everything. Even if their not bulging, theyre guaranteed to be way out of spec.

Asus boards from that period hold up pretty well. I havent seen anyone needing P2B or A7V capacitor replacement to gett reliably working board.

Single SLOT-1: Abit BF6 (it's BE6-II without Promise IDE)
With new caps it overclocks up to 148FSB fully stable and possibility to overclock by 1MHz steps rules.
P3B-F can do only 140FSB or 150FSB and never got 150FSB stable with 2 memory sticks.

Hehe, one of those questions that never will get a final answer 😀

Used to love my old Asus P2B, which I sadly got rid of when it became obsolete back in the day. Very stable, great overclocking board.

Also had an Abit BH6 I got for free with corrupted BIOS. Fixed it, and kept it as a backup. For some reason I never threw it away, it survived hidden away in some box until I got into retro computing. It's in my Celeron 1400 rig today. An absolutely awesome board.

Never really had any reason to look for anything else, but stumbled over a really cheap MSI MS-6119 a few years ago that I couldn't resist. Built a Via C3 rig around it, and the board really grew on me. It's not one of those fancy enthusiast/overclocking boards, but it's really stable and can do everything I need. It also reports system voltages at POST, a feature I really came to love. Always nice to at least get an idea of the power status when dealing with decades old hardware.