PIII-933Mhz, Abit SA6R? Ausus CUSL2 or CUV266?

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Guest

Guest
Hi

I decided to assemble my own PC about 2 weeks ago, and decide to use the Pentium III - 933 Mhz CPU - socket-370. (the best price I am getting is about 250$, does anybody know a better deal. please share).

Now I am trying to decide on a Mobo. From the reviews I figured its going to be one of the following three: Asus, Abit or Soyo. Correct me if I am wrong. I want to build a system which is pretty expandable and not limited by number of PCI slots/max RAM on board/FSB speed/slow HD. Also, since I am not upgrading, I dont want any old AMR/CMR or ISA slots.

I was trying to compare the ABit SA6R and the Asus CUV266 mobos (I also looked at Ausus CUSL2, very much like SA6R; please comment). I like both of them, but cant figure out which one is better since they use different chipsets. SA6R uses the 815e chipset which limits the system RAM to 512Mb only, but this chipset is recommended by many and since its made by Intel it may work better with PIII. On the other hand, the CUV266 is based on VIA® VT8633 133MHz AGPset with VT8233 South Bridge chipset which allows 133MHz FSB and 3GB PC2100 / PC1600 DDR DRAM.

Ausus CUV266 -http://event.asus.com.tw/expo2000/smb/cuv266.asp
Ausus CUSL2 - http://event.asus.com.tw/expo2000/smb/cusl2.asp
ABIT SA6R - http://www.motherboards.com/catalog/product_info.php?category_id=4&index_id=7&subcategory_id=7&products_id=307&


Am I comparing apples to apples here? By all means it seems that the new board CUV266 by Ausus is much better, but still wanted some sort of review. Any idea about prices on these mobos?
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Half the reason many people build PIII PC's is to avoid the VIA hassle. BGet the CUSL2, it is the one with the highest reputation in the industry, it is the standard everybody compares to, it offers the most BIOS options, it has the best bios updates support, it is the best thing since sliced bread! BTW, I reseached for months before I bought mine.
Pricewatch.com offers the 933 as low as $219, but the 700 is available for $130 and overclocks reliably to 933 on the CUSL2 with the same bus speed as the 933.

Suicide is painless...........
 

stable

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Feb 13, 2001
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I've got to agree that the CUSL2 is one hot MB. We (and our customers) really love it. In the past 30 days we've built about 120 of these systems AND NOT ONE HAS HAD ANY KIND OF PROBLEM!

I can't say any more than that! FAST, RELIABLE, STABLE! What else could you ask for?

One of our big customers (Tech Ed Concepts, Inc.) Just bought 10 more, all with 933MHz PIII's and they call every day to tell us how much they LOVE them! 30 Multitasks going on and you'd never know it AND USING ONLY 128MB OF CORSAIR RAM TO BOOT!! HUBBA HUBBA!

Make sure you buy GOOD RAM! Like Corsair or Mushkin (Don't cheap out on the RAM, buy the best Single Sided you can get your hands on (for 128MB modules that is) If you really need more, go with 256MB mods, but I would still suggest that you probably won't need it! The better name RAM makes a big difference in stability and performance and the single sided will perform better!

Also, make sure that you get a power supply with at least 2Amps on the +5Vsb! The InWin cases come standard now with PowerMan 300's and they are just fine for this system!

Steve Benoit

Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'
 

IntelConvert

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First, IF that 933MHz P3 is a Retail Box version (which comes with a factory warranty), it's a very good price at this time (Intel & AMD will be dropping prices again on March 5th)! Most, if not all, of the cpu's at www.pricewatch.com are OEM versions (with a limited DEALER warranty). That may be ok if you are going to overclock (which invalidates the factory warranty), but if you're not going to o/c, I would go Retail version!

Second, while I don't know anything about the other boards, I can personally vouch for the CUSL2 (there's also a less expensive CUSL2-C, but Stable does not like it). True, the i815 chipset won't support more than 512MB of SDRAM, but why in the world do you think that's insufficient?
 

IntelConvert

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One of our big customers (Tech Ed Concepts, Inc.) Just bought 10 more, all with 933MHz PIII's...
Steve, your use of the 933MHz part instead of the 1.0GHz cpu has me curious as to your experience with the 1.0GHz P3. Some posts (in other forums) suggest that it may have problems similar to the recalled 1.13GHz P3's(?)
 
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Guest

Guest
I really like the SA6R board, it seems though that everyone is so into the Asus series of mainboards. Since i´ve had a SE6 board aswell i can really only compare the two. Prior to purchasing my m/b i read alot of reviews of the board of my choice, it seems to me that the big problems with the SA6R is really the misplacement of the dimms and the powe connector, in a few of the reviews i´ve read it actually outperforms the CUSL-2 board. When it comes to stability, the HardOCP review thought of this board as being more stable than the CUSL-2. The really big advantage of the SA6R is the RAID controller, if you´re not using RAID you get less cpu utilisation with the highpoint controller. I´m really satisfied though with the performance of my raid array (2X75GXP).

I can do nothing but recommend this card to you!

Good Luck!
 
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Guest

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Yeah, you want to say that you will use more than 512 megs of RAM, aha, right. And to answer yer question about the mobo, Intel chipset for Intel CPU is far better than any Via even if it supports only 512 megs of RAM, and that I hope everybody knowz, but for some reason not you, poor soul... heh

"akuna mutata" braza... :wink:
 
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Guest

Guest
Unless, brazxa, you live in Australia, and Ausus can't be f*%ked with customer support, and we get wound up with all the dodgey mobos... I mean, who the hell has heard of 'Lucky Star' motherboards??? I don't trust mobos that sound like breakfast cereal.

'Hakuna matata! Dars un baile en mi kopp!'
 
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Guest

Guest
Was I talking to you, MadDolphinnnnn? Anyway, you are talking about the Asus being bad in Australia, so what is the point of initial question then, the guy was asking what is better and had 3 choices, 2 of them were Asus boards. I just cant get the issue here, what are you blabbling about??? And by the way, did I mention any Asus boards in my post??? cos Abit is using the same thing as Asus does, so go feed sharks, brazxa, you would be much more better help that way... heh

PS: sori, forgot "akuna mutata. jump yer bally on my poop"

"akuna mutata" braza... :wink: <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Pumba on 03/06/01 04:16 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

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