Im currently running dual p3-500's on a gigabyte 6bxd motherboard and have decided that I will upgrade to either dual p3-800's or 850's. This will require me to purchase a new motherboard and im not too sure whats best for me. I plan on sticking to 384mb pc100 ram and have a sblive, geforce, scsi card, network card etc. The boards that I had in mind were the Tyan Thunder 2400 (although, a few posts that I have seen about this board have been disturbing, especially irq assigning problems), Tyan Thunderbolt (havent heard anything about these before, anyone use em'?), the new Tyan Tiger 133 (hesitant because its based on the Via Apollo Pro133A chipset and havent heard anything about stability etc) or the Tyan Tiger 100 (probably a bit too old).

My current gigabyte board is as stable as a rock and I havent had any problems with my hardware with it ever. I would like things to stay the same when switching motherboard / cpu's and any suggestions on what the better dual cpu motherboards are with all factors considered (stability etc) would be appreciated. Thanks




[This message has been edited by wind (edited 14 July 2000).]

If you want a dual board now stick with BX. All I have seen is nothing but trouble for the I8xx series from intel. You could wait till the end of this year for the new Pentium 4s which will be around 1.3GHz from what I read. The good BX motherboards that I recommend is is the Tyan 100 Revision F and the Supermicro P6DBE Revesion 3.0 motherboards. But if you can wait then bite the bullet alittle longer

------------------
Supermicro P6DBE Rev 3.0 Motherboard
Dual Intel Pentium III 850
512 MEGS of ECC RAM
Sound Blaster Live!
Adaptec 29160 SCSI Card
GeForce 2 GTS 64MB
IBM DMVS18N Ultra 160 Hard Drive
Western Digital 20.5GB Hard Drive
Razer Boom Slang 2000 (USB)
Roland Sound Canvis SC-55
3COM 3CR990-TX-97 with 3XP Processor 10/100 PCI Network Interface Card
Plextor Plexwriter 12/4/32
Pioneer 10X DVD-ROM
Sony GDM-F500R Monitor

Did some forget to tell you need lot of $$cash$$ for all new Pentium 4.
Here what will need new to.
1: Will need Windows 2001 or Window.NET 64bit OS aka codename "Whistler".
2: All new MotherBoard that support Pentium 4.
3: All new Memory "RIMM" Yes that $$cash$$ cow memory.
4: All new Applications & Drivers
Intel is saying this puppy not back word's compatible with 32bit software "oh may" look MS will need wirp up real good 32bit emulate.

I do agree with you on that MarksmanX
sticking with the BX for another yr,
by then AMD will have it SMP setup ready to go & cost far less then Intel.

Umm, the Pentium 4 was formerly called Willamette, which is based on the IA-32 architecture, just like all the other x86 chips. We won't kick it up to 64 bits until the Itanium(Merced) comes out a little later, and even then it will be primarily for large servers with loads of cash. I don't believe the Pentium 4 will fit into a BX motherboard regardless, so if you're thinking that way, I'd just wait a few months.
Personally, I like the BX set and wish Intel would go back to others like it. I'd look for a BX solution right now and run a P3-800 if I had money for an upgrade.

[This message has been edited by Gerbache Kaznet (edited 15 July 2000).]

What about the via apollo pro 133a chipset? There are a few dual cpu boards popping up running off that chipset, it has 133mhz bus / 4x agp and other stuff

The trouble with Via is that they often have major compatibility issues, and they tend to be slower that Intel boards. I believe Tom's Hardware did a big story on 133 mhz motherboards where the via sets came in near the bottom (the BX came in first even though it was overclocked). Once Via can iron out their compatibility, they could be a very viable option, but until then, I'll stick with Intel.

I agree with Gerbacke Kaznet It's a 50/50 shot when you go generic. To some people they get 100% stability while others do not. I would personally stick with BX if you MUST upgrade.

------------------
Supermicro P6DBE Rev 3.0 Motherboard
Dual Intel Pentium III 850
512 MEGS of ECC RAM
Sound Blaster Live!
Adaptec 29160 SCSI Card
GeForce 2 GTS 64MB
IBM DMVS18N Ultra 160 Hard Drive
Western Digital 20.5GB Hard Drive
Razer Boom Slang 2000 (USB)
Roland Sound Canvis SC-55
3COM 3CR990-TX-97 with 3XP Processor 10/100 PCI Network Interface Card
Plextor Plexwriter 12/4/32
Pioneer 10X DVD-ROM
Sony GDM-F500R Monitor

If your apps require Max memory bandwith, you should forget PX CPUs and BX chipsets. You should definatly consider running Dual Xeon. They are optimized for memory Bandwith and have the Cache required for High Floating Point Integer Calculations. There is no need to run 800Mhz CPUs when you have lots of bandwith. For multi-tasking, which we all need to do at some point, there is no better setup.
RAM + Cache + Bandwith = Power.
I find that the MS-6135 from MSI is great. http://www.msi.com.tw/Product/mainboard/6321.htm
I am running Dual Xeon P2 400 w/1MB of Cache. I picked up my setup for approx. $1900.00, sold privatly so there was no tax on the CPUs, but the board which I bought new, was $379.00 + Taxes = $432.06. And that's Canadian...The rest of my system for those interested, 2 x 128MBSDRAM, TNT2 32MB AudioWork 8 (2INs/8OUTs), SBLive MP3, KA Plus 13.6GB NT Boot drive, Hacked Promise U66 to Fasttrak 66 w/4 x 13.6GB Fujisty 5400RPM running 2+0 Stripe x 2. Premiere 5 has never run so well, specialy when rendering previews. With Cubase 5, the audio streams are very consistant with 6FX on each channel having 32 concurent tracks. This is my home computer. Q3 still benchmarks low because the bottleneck is my TNT2(non-ultra). I have no problems with Cubase like some users of 98 on budget machines. 2K's NTFS is out of this world with the RAID setup too...Well I hope this can help you!

A very good BX board is ABIT's BP6.
It's a socket370 PPGA board, but with an adapter it works fine with all the new FCPGA processors. (my friend uses one with 800 MHz PIII FCPGA, great!!!!!!!)
I use the mobo with dual celeron 400, too, win2k, with the newest bios acpi and all the other gizmos are working fine. even if you decide to o/c your cpu and/or chipset (133 MHz) it is stable an works fine.

Oh, I forgot something:

the bp6 has an onboard Ultra ATA 66 controller with good drivers for win2k (must be downloaded from the manufacturers website at http://www.highpoint-tech.com)