luckybob wrote:I have several. All work. I also have the ali5's as well and there really isnt much of a noticeable difference. As for jumpers, that is more of a manufacturer thing than anything else. I had a TYAN board based off the 503 and it was so easy to jumper, a blind man with no fingers could do it.
Hmm, different branded 503 boards? Or do you mean other, similar, MVP3 based board apart from FIC's VA-503+. (FIC should be the only manufacturer of that specific board, and that -along with the ATX PA-2013- are known for there difficult jumper layouts)
I also have a board that has lots of jumpers and none seem to be marked. Its a no-name Taiwan P.O.S.
Heh, that sounds like the FIC board right there . . . FIC IS a Taiwan company, and the boards I've seen aren't very obviously marked either. (sometimes no FIC markings, just a part number and VA-503+ written -though my 503A had "FIC VA-503A" printed in big letters across the middle of the board)
If it has 4 SIMM and 2 DIMM slots, 3 PCI, 3 ISA, 1 AGP, it's almost definitely the FIC 503+. (I'm not sure if any other MVP3 boards supported 72-pin SIMMs, or at least not any common ones)
Edit: hmm, except the real FIC 503+ boards tend to at least have the jumpers marked (if in a confusing manner), so I'm not so sure here. (unless they also made cheap-o versions that skated on printed labeling -though that would be an odd area to save cost)
I think the real appeal of the MVP chipset was the 66mhz ram flexibility. Allowing people to use their old ram is a BIG selling point. You can save your old ram in a new board, wait 6 months and get new ram.
Not just the decoupled RAM/FSB speeds either, but also the support for both SIMMs and DIMMs in the case of the 503+. (albeit not in many other MVP3/MVP4 based boards, including the 503A -not that that's a problem for what I'd want anyway)
Now once you get into overclocking, in "MY" experience, the Asus P5A-B is KING. Easy jumpers, and memory over-voltage options! (Aladdin 5 chipset though)
There's smaller steps in clock rate too (105, 110, 115, 120 -vs 112 and 124 on MVP boards).
Weren't there also some ALI chipset SS7 boards with 133 MHz options too? (and 1/4 PCI dividers -something that would also be useful for stability at 120 MHz . . . and would have been quite useful on MVP boards for 124 MHz -as it is, you run into the same overclocking issues as 83 MHz FSB)
My advice would be find a name brand board, with the features you want and you should be fine. If you want to experiment and/or overclock, i'd get an Asus P5A-B. If you want something that is known for no-frills stability and high performance, I'd look for a tyan S1590. There are also ATX versions but i assume you know how to google.
I think I'm happy with that 503A I have for now, but I was curious about the 503+ (both from a historical perspective, and as a possible alternative/replacement option if the 503A ever dies or for other reasons -my 503A is only the 512k cache version, plus having more than 1 ISA slot could be useful). OTOH, the 503+ can't take 2 long PCI cards, but the 503A can. (though I only have 1 voodoo 2 currently)
The 503+ seems to be among the most common SS7 boards out there, and it's also the only type I've seen show up at WeirdStuff warehouse this year.
noshutdown wrote:man i believe ali5 boards performance are far superior over mvp3 ones, unfortunately they have HUGE agp issues in win2000(win98 seems ok anyways). i have tried gigabyte rev4.1 and rev5.2, both vulnerable to this, and i doubt asus ones would be much better because p5a rev1.05 and newer have bugs with k6-2+/k6-3+, while rev1.04 uses old version of ali5 chipset, which is supposed to have more compatibility issues.
so, maybe i got to give mvp3 boards a try, and my favorite name brand goes to dfi.
The MVP based boards tend to need a BIOS update to work with the K6+ models (some ALI boards too -the GA5 doesn't though).
As for performance, I'd really gotten the impression from old reviews/articles I've found online that the MVP3 was the benchmark leading standard of SS7 chipsets (and the VA-503+ was the top of those). Perhaps the comparison would be less favorable when comparing 512k cache MVP boards. (the standard configuration for the 503+ was 1 MB)
