bloodem wrote on 2021-07-25, 18:41:
but that's mainly because, let's face it, most other chipsets of the time were really, really, really bad (*cough* VIA Apollo Pro 133 *cough*) - they were slow, had terrible compatibility issues (including memory compatibility, peripheral compatibility) and as for stability... well, let's not even get into that. 😀
I'm going to correct you here -the Apollo PRO 133 (VT82C693/693A) is a socket 370 chipset, not a slot 1 chipset*, so it's best compared to the 810 and 815. Did you perhaps mean Via Apollo PRO / PRO II (VT82C691/692)? Those can be quite bad. Primarily the AGP implementation when using some nvidia cards (notably anything newer then a TNT2). It's also picky about ram, and is usually paired up with the VT82C586 SB witch only supports ATA 33. With said video cards it's limited to AGP 1X, and coupled with ATA33 they're slower then a 440BX. There is a combination of drivers (via 4 in 1 and forceware) that allows you to run some nvidia cards at AGP 2x (up to geforce 4 ti) but I can't remember specifically what version, and the boards are so finnicky they're not really worth using. Currenly I won only one VT82C692 system, and they only reason I built it is because the mainboard is AT form factor. I'm running an 850MHz Pentium 3 and a Geforce 2 GTS in it (at 1x, running it at AGP 2x makes win98 freeze seconds after showing the desktop) and it will only work with two ram sticks - one samsung and one infineon. A pain in the butt.
The Apollo PRO 133, 133A and 133T (VT82C693/693A/694X/694T) on the other hand are excellent chipsets - in fact in my experience they're the best socket 370 retro build, partly because most 693/694 boards have an ISA slot, mostly because of great stability, ram compatibility, price and availability. The apollo pro 133A (VT82C694) supports AGP 4X, ATA 100 or ATA 133** depending on the southbridge, 1 or 2 ISA slots, and can pretty easyly run a pin modded tualatin (the 694T variant supports tualatin chips out of the box).
My Asus CUV4X is one of my favorite socket 370 mainboard. It's "rock solid" (pun intended), works with any stick of ram I put in it, it works with a pin-modded 1GHz tualatin celeron (and it's been running it at 10x133=1333MHz stable for over 6 years), I can use my gullemot maxi gamer 64 in it, and runs great with a Geforce 3 Ti500 + a Voodoo 2 12MB.
*There are slot 1 VIA Apollo 133 and even 133A boards, but they're pretty rare. I own a ASUS P3V4X (slot 1, VT82C694X) and it wil happily run any 133MHz fsb CPU with a passive slotket - even a pin modded tualatin.
** Some late socket 370 budget boards (2001,2002) as well as most new (2010+) industrial motherboards (check out alibaba or aliexpress - look for "370 motherboard") pair the VT82C694X northbridge with the VT8233, VT8235 even VT8255 southbridges, adding ATA 133 and sometimes (rarely) even USB 2.0. Aliexpress boards are a gigabyte clone, and seem to support tualatin chips out of the box, despite using the 694X chipset and not the 694T.