swaaye wrote:Well I think you have had uniquely negative experiences with 440BX. The worst problems I've had with it is pickyness about which PCI cards go in which PCI slot. I have run just about every AGP card imaginable off of my Abit BF6.
Ahh no, it actually wasn't all that unique. The other member here that I know, Quoth09, suffered the same issue in fact with the P3B-f and the Voodoo 3 3000 and AIW 8500. He was the first I knew of to deal with the mess, when I first got into computer gaming, and after that I'd see people post about it off and on.
In 2005 when I started getting a lot of parts in, half the 440BX system pulls I got in did not like running with anything much more powerful then a TNT1, but the worst ones were the Asus boards I mentioned. Googling and lurking around diff forums on old thread post showed this was a common voltage problem on older early gen 440BX based boards, and it was never really sorted out with a bios fix. Overclock results really sucked when trying to use a AGP card on 440BX also. That same grafx card could handle a bump up on the AGP speed on another platform fine, but on the 440BX, nope, GF2 GTS freeze freeze freeze. Nothing like seeing Max Payne dive to dodge some bullets and have him freeze midway through.
Due to that I am really picky about what slot 1 boards I am willing to keep around in storage, mainly sticking with the VIA ones. In general, yeah, I know others out there love Intel and the 440BX, but I could care less. There is better more flexible hardware out there from that generation, not just on the AMD side, but on the Socket 370 also.