Several things:

#1 The CUV4X-DLS is a coppermine board. It does not natively support Tualatin.

#2 Its VERY easy to saturate the pci bus with a just Pentium pro and a regular sata drive. (i've done it) Its also a non-issue. You have AGP video, you will be just fine.

#3 Also I've paid several hundred dollars for certain dual-cpu boards. They don't come up often and if you don't pony up the cash, someone else usually will. That said, I was going after a very rare board. It took me over a DECADE to locate one, and I figuratively threw my wallet at a person Germany and Florida to get my Asus TRL-DLS. Granted the TRL-DLS is on a completely different level than the CUV4X-DLS, but the point remains valid.

#4 There is nothing major I can recall about the 133A. I'm sure it has its quirks, like EVERY chipset. SSDs are going to be superior in random access, but a quick, new spinner will do just fine. Don't worry about it. I'd personally avoid SSD drives on pre-windows 7 setups. The lack of TRIM is an issue and its just not needed, tbh.

#5 I'd avoid scsi all together unless you want to *REALLY* commit to that particular rabbit hole. Its quite the investment unless you already have the parts. The onboard scsi is a great option, but unless you already have the cables, drives, etc. Most people aren't happy with the outcome. I LOVE SCSI. More than anyone here, I'd wager. But when you have the option of Sata, its the correct choice in ALL cases.

#6 To answer your question, yes they exist. But the manufacturer has drank the coolaid and raised the prices from ~$250 (still high) to $2000. Lookup the ACARD ARS-2320 on Ebay/Amazon if you care to see. There are cheaper ones out there, but some are limited in what drives work. Trust me, if its less than $100, it doesn't work.

Thank you Luckybob.
Actually I know that the cxard is not Tualatin ready, as it is a P3B-F... But we know what to do in that department.

My major concerns on the 133a are the memory performance and the poor AGP implementation (from what I read, no "recent" AGP card will ever work properly), but the CUV4X-DLS has AGP pro in it. Maybe it is something good?

It seems AGP performance is something that no chipset maker ever really got 100% correct (non-intel anyway). I think that's half of the appeal of the 440BX chipset. I personally believe it is down to the motherboard manufacturer. If a slapdash company used a via chip to save cost, and did a poor job, it colors peoples expectations of the chipset, when it really was the fault of the chineseium motherboard. Asus is a long standing and respected manufacturer, I would expect any of their products to work as advertised.

I've read good and bad reviews on the VIA. Asus boards with the VIA chips seem to fall into the "slightly slower, but stable" category. A category that I wholeheartedly agree with BTW. Also, the 4-in-1 drivers are reported to have fixed most if not all issues. I'd wager, if you had a fresh 2K/XP install, with proper drivers, I don't think you will have any significant issues. (at least in the agp area)

I'm interested to find out what your experience is! If you truly want to prostrate yourself on the sword of SCSI, I can help with that too. Just don't be surprised if you find out SATA is superior in EVERY way, shape and form.

I'd personally avoid SSD drives on pre-windows 7 setups.

SSD drives like Intel X25-E don't do TRIM and don't need it really, like most SLC based drives. There's also utilities to force TRIM on older OS. And if that's not enough: TRIM is not required with sufficient over-provisioning.

Very true.

Unless this machine is going to be your daily driver, a SSD is highly unlikely to ever need trim, but I'm ultra-paranoid about it, so without trim support, I wont use an SSD. And honestly on an new sata drive, the difference is negligible, at best.

So be it,
I will give this Asus a try.
No alternatives at the moment anyway and from what I understand, I should be pretty lucky to spend "only" 50€.
I already have a 370gu adapter and p3-s 1400.
Looking for another one.

Update: I am prepping an hd with XP on it using a QDI Advance 10F, same chipset, Asus will take time to reach me.
I see the system is extremely slow (p-3 800mhz and 384 mega of ram).
Even surfing the Web with a non sse2 browser is challenging...
Not even my k6-III+ is so slow....

Of course I got rid of svchost Problem, but it still is terrible Slow.

What is going on here??

As VIA chipsets come in cause, due to my experience, I have to post.
I had experiences with two different motherboards using a VIA chipset: a QDI Advance 10T and an Asus TUV4X. While the A10T had no issue whatsoever at running in AGP 4X mode, the TUV4X has instabilities and BSOD issues if 4X mode is enabled, but it's rock solid at AGP 2X mode. However if you plan to use a bridged AGP card on your build, avoid NVidia cards: the Geforce 7800GS (an example of a bridged Nvidia AGP card that I own) has severe rendering errors in AGP 2X mode, but on the other hand, the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro works fine.

Since the TUV4X is just a CUV4X with Tualatin and single CPU support, it is most likely similar to yours, except the due differences. Performance wise, it is slightly slower in 2X mode, but not excessively: I run my system overclocked with the FSB set to 164MHz through SetFSB and the memory running at 3-2-2-5 in ECC mode, and the system runs quite snappy.

If the CUV4X-DLS supports it (most likely) you can install four 1GB ECC memory modules, letting you expand the system up to 4GB. That is an insane amount of RAM for a retro system, and it is my short term objective.

Returning to the HDD controller, I side with Luckybob, and I say: go with SATA. On my system I use a Promise SATA300 TX2 Plus, and runs great. As a backup card, I have a Fasttrak TX2300, which is the SATA300 TX2 with RAID support and lacking an IDE header. Two little tips: make sure you have both cards, because, at least on the TUV4X, the SATA300 TX2 will take around 30 seconds to detect the HDDs if you use an Nvidia native AGP card (while if I use the X1950 Pro, the drives are detected immediately... What a mystery). The TX2300 doesn't have such an issue with any card.

Also, if you plan to put a NIC: do not, and I say, do not put it into a slaved slot! The TUV4X (and most likely the CUV4X) has only two PCI slots with a non shared IRQ: slot 3 and slot 4. Put the NIC and the SATA controller on those slots, you can use the rest for the sound card (I use a Sound Blaster Live! CT4620), because NICs don't like shared IRQs, causing stuttering and freezes.

About the rest, I had absolutely no issues regarding performance with VIA chipsets. Of course, I always used 4in1 v.4.43 alongside the PCI latency Patch by George Breese, the VIA PFD Patch for Promise controllers, and tweaked the chipset with WPCREDIT to get the most out of the chipset. You'll be amazed by that motherboard, and I admit I'm a little jealous, a shame that Asus did not make a dual CPU version of the TUV4X...

Thank you, I will keep you posted once I receive the card.

Hello, not sure which pci slot is shared and which not. I see sharing possibilities with every single one.
Maybe I am misunderstanding something?

looks like #3 doesn't have anything shared with it.

Waiting for the Behemoth, I am playing around with a P3B-F using exacy the same windows installation used on the QDI (XP SP3 on a TX4302 sata controller).
It is ridiculous how faster the system is.

I really hope the optimizations suggested for the VIA chipset will help.

Another thing, 1gbb pc133 ram is very expensive today...

Mamba wrote on 2020-01-07, 20:01:

Another thing, 1gbb pc133 ram is very expensive today...

I see some 1GB sticks on eBay for pretty cheap.

Problem is, I am in Italy.
Shipping and import costs are high.
It seems that in EU are very expensive.

Mamba wrote on 2020-01-05, 06:58:

Hello, not sure which pci slot is shared and which not. I see sharing possibilities with every single one.
Maybe I am misunderstanding something?

Slot 3 and 4 are not slaved. Put the SATA controller and the NIC in those.
By the way, I'm Italian as well.

I have two of those 1GB PC133 "Google" sticks. They seem to overclock very well, as I can reach 164MHz FSB at 3-2-2-5, using SetFSB and ECC mode enabled. I have bought other two sticks of that kind, as I want to bring my system to 4GB.

Wish I could find them without spending a non sense for shipping to Italy.

I am an idiot. Got rid of the QDI and the coppermine before updating the cuv4x-dls that has bios 1010.
Now it won't boot with the tualatin and the adapter...

You will need a modded BIOS that supports the pin modded Tuallies. Did you buy the CPUs from the South Korean seller?

No I have an upgradeware 370gu adapter.
And a modded bios given by the kind kprean guy.
But I forgot to update the motherboard with regular cpu.

Whops, that sucks. You'll have to find a Coppermine CPU then. I do have some, but I don't have enough time to ship them, as my job keeps me busy.