Need Help Please !!!!

My current price/performance favarite

AMD Athlon/Duron at least 900Mhz as shown by tom
(O/C or not to get there is your choice)
Asus A7V133 (must use the 133FSB or else pointless)
ATA100 7200rpm HDD
PC133 7ns CL2
GF2 GTS or better (never Radeon for me, not yet)

else Asus A7M266 (but have bug from DDR technology)
PC2100 bla bla bla 7.5ns CL2.5 better if there were 7ns CL2, but you'll never find it

Never buy a P3! sorry no offence to your P3.

Best regards
cx5

Oh gee, more important NEVER ask whether you should buy a Intel vs an AMD processor. It's a very passionate debate with both sides arguing theirs is better. (Though most reviews I have seen suggest the AMD will outperform the equivalent speed Intel, the biggest difference I see that AMD is cheaper.)

As for your situation, the first replier was giving his suggestion for a complete system. The A7V133 isn't even an option for you because it is designed for AMD T'Birds not your P3 (assuming you want to keep your current CPU that is). I know Asus makes good MBs for P3s but I don't know much about them. As for no bugs, that's an unrealistic hope when buying components. If you build your own system you are going to have to worry about lots of BIOS and driver updates. When you buy a complete system from Dell, Gateway, etc, you end up paying more but at least you get something that works (usually).

Motherboard for Socket 370 processors

Intel chipsets :

Good old I440Bx : Asus P3BF ( shouldn't be available on the market anymore ).

I815 : Asus CUSL2 or ASUS CUSL2-C ( the later is without the on board video card ).

Other nice boards :

ABIT - BE6 ( OLD ONE BUT NICE ONE )
ABIT SAR6 (I 815 chipset )



VIA Chipsets :

ASUS CUV4X series.. if you want dual processing then use ASUS CUV4X-D... ( I don't recommend this because you're using a VIA chipset UGHHHHH )...

Gygabyte (6vxe7+ which isn't my recommendations.. but if money is an issue.. ).

It's i815 ep and it supports 512 MB ram...

There's a glitch in i815 chipset it can't support more than 512 MB of ram I think

The Asus CUSL2 is the best board made for the PIII. The -C has the video removed. The original has video but it is automatically disabled by installing an AGP card, and does not reduce performance (no trace of it once the AGP card is installed). So either one is suitable.
A nice thing about the CUSL2 (and CUSL2-C)is that it will allow you to overclock your processor if you choose, to 133FSB, making it go 800 without even breaking a sweat. And it offers memory speed options at 133FSB of 133 or 100, so if you need to save you older PC100 RAM it will still work.
It also supports AGP 4X.
It will also make your processor go 900MHz at 150MHz FSB if you decide to upgrade your ram.
In order to overclock it is often necessary to raise the CPU core voltage by a very small amount; .05 through .10 volts. The CUSL2 (and -C) allow this in bios. These also provide separate memory timing settings to get your memory to peak performance.
It also slices chick, chops tomatoes, and shreds paper-jsut kidding. But it is a great board and can get you to peak performance.

Suicide is painless...........

FSB=Front Side Bus, PC133=Memory speed. Normally, memory speed=FSB, but several motherboards such as the CUSL2 offer a special feature that allows them to be set at different speeds. It makes it possible in this case to push your CPU speed up by 1/3 (133FSB instead of 100), but leave your memory at 100. Or you can change them both to 133. This feature is handy for those who do not want to buy more memory and already own PC100. But with memory prices so low, the perforamnce gain of switching to PC133 is worth the price for most people.

Suicide is painless...........

The CUSL2 gives you the following base speeds, and is adjustable in 1MHz increments between them:
66/66/33 FSB/Ram/PCI-used for Celerons
66/100/33 used for Celerons with PC100 to improve performance.
100/100/33-Stock setting for the PIII E series processor.
133/133/33-STock setting for the PIII EB series processor.
133/100/33-Modified setting for PIII EB w/PC100.
From 100-132, the 100 settings will increase memory and PCI speed with bus speed for overclocking.
To get to 133, you use one of the 133 settings, and your memory and PCI go to base speeds, becaus the internal devider changes. As you increase from 133, memory and PCI speed increase as well.
So the easy way to overclock your processor with your PC100 is to change the setting from 100/100/33 to 133/100/33. Your processor will then operate at 800MHz. I have my 700 set at 933 using the same method. You can also change your voltage. Stock voltage is 1.65v for most PIII processors (no need to go into all the voltages right now), and I have mine set at 1.75v. For 800MHz, 1.70v should do on yours, but it varies with the processor. Almost any decent CPU cooler will do for this level of overclocking.
The cool thing is, that with this motherboard, you can actually run your board at 150MHz FSB. That would get you to 900, and overclock your AGP card, forcing higher data rates. I would try 800 first since it does not require new memory nor put strain on the rest of the system.

Suicide is painless...........