ontrca wrote on 2023-10-27, 19:27:

Can someone rank my socket 7 motherboards from best to worst please? :) or from bad to worst whatever the case may be... […]
Show full quote

Can someone rank my socket 7 motherboards from best to worst please? 😀
or from bad to worst whatever the case may be... 😀

Like which one would you use first and second as far as stability and performance and stuff like that? 😀

The processors I have are Intel 166mhz(2), 200mhz(2) and 233mhz(2).
All are MMX.

Amptron PM-8600A
FIC PA-2013 (VER 2.0)
DFI 586ITBD (REV B)
DFI 586ITBD (REV B1)
IWill P55XB2 (VER 1.21)
FIC PT-2003
MB-8500TVX-A (VER 1.1)

I don't know how I got two DFI 586ITBD motherboards 😀

Thank You for any help =)

Better off give us some specs or links to pics and specs. I'm rational (lazy) person, so I'll be brief as the given info: at first look FIC PA-2013 is SS7 mobo and the rest are S7 mobos i.e. inferior to SS7.

Some of these boards are babyAT, others are ATX. Which case and PSU(s) do you have?

Some support only SIMMs, others SIMMs and DIMM and at least one DIMM only. Which memory do you have / intend to use?

One board has known issues with relatively high-current AGP cards. Others only support PCI or ISA. What VGA are you planning to use?

There's no such thing as a generic 'best' board, only best under given circumstances and use. You need to define those for a sensible answer.

Agree ! Depends on what you are going to do with it !
the FIC PA-2013 is sort of the infamous FIC 503+ but in ATX form and is the best of those boards for CPU support IMHO

dionb wrote on 2023-10-27, 22:50:

Some of these boards are babyAT, others are ATX. Which case and PSU(s) do you have? […]
Show full quote

Some of these boards are babyAT, others are ATX. Which case and PSU(s) do you have?

Some support only SIMMs, others SIMMs and DIMM and at least one DIMM only. Which memory do you have / intend to use?

One board has known issues with relatively high-current AGP cards. Others only support PCI or ISA. What VGA are you planning to use?

There's no such thing as a generic 'best' board, only best under given circumstances and use. You need to define those for a sensible answer.

I have both type of cases(AT/ATX) and all types of video cards including ISA/PCI/AGP. I also have all types of memory of all different sizes.

dionb wrote on 2023-10-27, 22:50:

Some of these boards are babyAT, others are ATX. Which case and PSU(s) do you have? […]
Show full quote

Some of these boards are babyAT, others are ATX. Which case and PSU(s) do you have?

Some support only SIMMs, others SIMMs and DIMM and at least one DIMM only. Which memory do you have / intend to use?

One board has known issues with relatively high-current AGP cards. Others only support PCI or ISA. What VGA are you planning to use?

There's no such thing as a generic 'best' board, only best under given circumstances and use. You need to define those for a sensible answer.

I'm aware of the rumored current problem of the FIC PA-2013 and some people seem to agree that it may not be that big of a problem...

Horun wrote on 2023-10-28, 02:11:

Agree ! Depends on what you are going to do with it !
the FIC PA-2013 is sort of the infamous FIC 503+ but in ATX form and is the best of those boards for CPU support IMHO

What am I going to do with it/them?
DOS/Win 3.11/Win95/Win98/etc.
Parts swap
Tinker,experiment and play 😀

Horun wrote on 2023-10-28, 02:11:

Agree ! Depends on what you are going to do with it !
the FIC PA-2013 is sort of the infamous FIC 503+ but in ATX form and is the best of those boards for CPU support IMHO

I have 6 New Old stock tower cases and 2 New Old Stock desktop cases and I'm trying to decide which motherboard I want to put into which case 😀

So I'm asking which motherboards are the better ones so I can decide which ones to start with 😀

I forgot I have this MB also: ECS P5VX-B Rev 1.2 AT Socket 7

ontrca wrote on 2023-10-28, 10:15:

Horun wrote on 2023-10-28, 02:11:

Agree ! Depends on what you are going to do with it !
the FIC PA-2013 is sort of the infamous FIC 503+ but in ATX form and is the best of those boards for CPU support IMHO

I have 6 New Old stock tower cases and 2 New Old Stock desktop cases and I'm trying to decide which motherboard I want to put into which case 😀

So I'm asking which motherboards are the better ones so I can decide which ones to start with 😀

I agree with the others, your question is a bit vague.
What is the "best" for you?
When it is about being fastest, then you should choose a super socket 7 mainboard with SDRAM and AGP. And of course take the 233MHz. Maybe use multiplier 2.5 and 100MHz FSB.
And ATX vs. AT? Well that is more or less about personal taste, when you have both options.

The best motherboard is the one that suits your needs and you allready own or can easily afford. You did not specify exactly what you want to do with them, so I'm gonna guess you want to build a DOS/early win9x gaming PC. For that purpose I'd go with the FIC PA-2013, mainly because it's the only one with an AGP slot and second because it also supports the AMD K62/2+/III line of CPUs.

For a pentium MMX any of the other boards would do.

For me, the "best" ones are both revisions of DFI 586ITBD and the FIC PA-2013, the ATX power connector is very convenient nowadays.

Both DFI motherboards are based on the Intel 430TX chipset and there is a modded BIOS that allows you to use larger HDDs up to 128GB and adds support for AMD K6plus CPUs. The FIC PA-2013 is the only SS7 motherboard of the bunch, having the AGP slot and 100 MHz FSB setting if overclocking the Pentium MMX is your thing.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-10-28, 13:47:

For me, the "best" ones are both revisions of DFI 586ITBD and the FIC PA-2013, the ATX power connector is very convenient nowadays.

Both DFI motherboards are based on the Intel 430TX chipset and there is a modded BIOS that allows you to use larger HDDs up to 128GB and adds support for AMD K6plus CPUs. The FIC PA-2013 is the only SS7 motherboard of the bunch, having the AGP slot and 100 MHz FSB setting if overclocking the Pentium MMX is your thing.

I put an AMD -K6-2/500 in the FIC PA-2013 😀 I haven't had a chance to play around with it much yet 😀

I didn't know I could mod the BIOS in the DFI 586ITBD 😀
I have an AMD -K6-2/400., it looks like I can use it in there 😀

Can someone link to the DFI 586ITBD flash program or does http://www.steunebrink.info/ have it and I am just I am just missing it? 😀

There are several versions of Award flash on this page, I would start with 8.16A as it should work. If it doesn't recognize the flash ROM, try one of the two older ones listed. https://web.archive.org/web/20061020193306fw_ … 2.asp#socket478

Uniflash would probably work, so that's another option.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-10-28, 13:47:

For me, the "best" ones are both revisions of DFI 586ITBD and the FIC PA-2013, the ATX power connector is very convenient nowadays.

Both DFI motherboards are based on the Intel 430TX chipset and there is a modded BIOS that allows you to use larger HDDs up to 128GB and adds support for AMD K6plus CPUs. The FIC PA-2013 is the only SS7 motherboard of the bunch, having the AGP slot and 100 MHz FSB setting if overclocking the Pentium MMX is your thing.

I guess I'll start on a DFI 586ITBD 😀
It has 256mb ram at the moment.
166mhz CPU at the moment.
But I'm gonna try the BIOS update that @Gmlb256 suggested 😀 I have an AMD-K6-2/400 😀

NOS tower case. I'm not sure why I like this style of case 😀

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-10-31, 02:29:

Uniflash would probably work, so that's another option.

Uniflash worked 😀
Thank You 😀

ontrca wrote on 2023-11-01, 15:10:

I guess I'll start on a DFI 586ITBD :) It has 256mb ram at the moment. 166mhz CPU at the moment. But I'm gonna try the BIOS upda […]
Show full quote

I guess I'll start on a DFI 586ITBD 😀
It has 256mb ram at the moment.
166mhz CPU at the moment.
But I'm gonna try the BIOS update that @Gmlb256 suggested 😀 I have an AMD-K6-2/400 😀

That's a 430TX board, it only caches 64MB of memory. Having 4 times that would actually give you worse performance.

^ Yep, but that limitation can be mostly mitigated by installing a K6-III or K6plus (K6-2+ and K6-III+) CPUs due to them having on-die L2 cache.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-11-04, 13:52:

^ Yep, but that limitation can be mostly mitigated by installing a K6-III or K6plus (K6-2+ and K6-III+) CPUs due to them having on-die L2 cache.

I only had an AMD-K6-2/400 that I put in it 😀