Need new ATX DDR4 Motherboard

[researcher]

Both were producing "bargain" chipsets for Intel, Cyrix and AMD CPU's. Both also produced video chips, SiS's video (often used onboard) was "adequate" for non-gaming use, and their drivers weren't too bad, that may be what you were thinking of. Their North Bridge and South Bridge chips were not great.

I can't remember the vendor, but they used an SiS "RAID" chip on one of their boards, so you had I think it was an Intel southbridge, but if you wanted to use RAID, you had to use the SiS controller, which had way lower throughput and it was of course software RAID and the drivers were total sketch (the arrays would just randomly break and have to rebuild, lol). That was before HighPoint kind of became the defacto standard (remember Promise?) and Adaptec wasn't really in the consumer space, they were still really focusing on SCSI.

SiS, ALi and VIA were the reason AMD CPU's (and to a lesser extent Cyrix, since they were always viewed as budget) didn't have the same reputation for robustness and stability that Intel enjoyed, who always produced their own chipsets, though of course that didn't stop some vendors from producing lower priced boards using cheaper chipsets. AMD of course famously stopped producing their own chipsets after Slot A. I had an ASUS Slot A board with an AMD chipset kicking around here for a long time. AMD's own chipsets were excellent.

Of course we later saw both ATI (before AMD bought them) and NVidia produce chipsets as well, which helped AMD to some extent. Once the Northbridge was rolled into the CPU die, things got a lot better.

NVidia famously produced a chipset(s?) that had a crazy high rate of failure (integrated video, which made it popular) that affected all major brands, including Apple. And, that impacted both AMD and Intel CPU's, IIRC.

Yup.. Nvidia made some really bad chipsets! I remember them well. And what about when the Athlon with the Slot A just came out. And we all built computers with the FIC SD11 motherboard? No one told us that FIC rushed it to market with a prototype 4-layer board! DOH! Really wasn't helping us custom PC builder's reputation with low quality like that.. Asus on the other hand.. I've continue to use their products ever since ABIT failed because of the capacitor scandal! That took them down, so sad.. I liked ABIT's products.

But Asus hasn't been bad either!

I can see why AMD bought out ATI and began making their own chipsets! They had to, so they could become reliable. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!!

 

[OVERKILL]

No doubt. But when could DOS even handle the larger HDD?

Don't think so. The CHS limit was still in place right into the 486 years for IDE. You could have an array that large in SCSI though for sure, but it wouldn't be a single drive.

 

[OVERKILL]

Yup.. Nvidia made some really bad chipsets! I remember them well. And what about when the Athlon with the Slot A just came out. And we all built computers with the FIC SD11 motherboard? No one told us that FIC rushed it to market with a prototype 4-layer board! DOH! Really wasn't helping us custom PC builder's reputation with low quality like that.. Asus on the other hand.. I've continue to use their products ever since ABIT failed because of the capacitor scandal! That took them down, so sad.. I liked ABIT's products.

But Asus hasn't been bad either!

I can see why AMD bought out ATI and began making their own chipsets! They had to, so they could become reliable. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!!

Remember the AT ALi Socket 7 boards with the AMD CPU's? You could get like an AMD K6-2 450 dirt cheap and recycle an AT case that previously had a 286, 386 or 486 in it!

 

[researcher]

Remember the AT ALi Socket 7 boards with the AMD CPU's? You could get like an AMD K6-2 450 dirt cheap and recycle an AT case that previously had a 286, 386 or 486 in it!

oh ya I do remember those, but when the Athlon came out, those plans just disappeared! I remember looking at the flow charts of how the CPU was set up and being able to have the ALU have three pipelines in parallel! WHOA! Not to mention didn't have to wait the 1 clock cycle for the instruction to enter the pipeline! man.. that was awesome. And here AMD bought the rights from DEC (Digital Elec Corp) of their Alpha CPU, that's how they got the Athlon core developed. Here Intel was at I think it was 350mhz with the Pentium III but the Athlon was at 600mhz! good memories!!

and your post about the dual celerons.. I had a guy in college who had that.. it was pretty sweet! But when I got the Athlon bye bye celeron.. lol

 

[blufeb95]

No doubt. But when could DOS even handle the larger HDD?

DOS (pre windows 95OSR2) could handle upto 2GB partitions and upto 8GB HDD, although many BIOSes of the era had limits of around 500MB, later 2GB, then later on around 8GB. Although with a dynamic disk overlay software like Ontrack Disk Manager installed at the beginning of the drive the BIOS limit could be exceeded.

 

[goingplacesanddoingstuff]

Remember the AT ALi Socket 7 boards with the AMD CPU's? You could get like an AMD K6-2 450 dirt cheap and recycle an AT case that previously had a 286, 386 or 486 in it!

I had a K6-III 450 and thought it was “the bomb.”

 

[Pablo]

DOS (pre windows 95OSR2) could handle upto 2GB partitions and upto 8GB HDD, although many BIOSes of the era had limits of around 500MB, later 2GB, then later on around 8GB. Although with a dynamic disk overlay software like Ontrack Disk Manager installed at the beginning of the drive the BIOS limit could be exceeded.

I think I got the memory shakes reading that.

BIOS limit comes to mind. Good gawd. 1990 or so??

 

[Pablo]

We may be similar in age...

Pablo slips out of the conversation.....

 

[OVERKILL]

oh ya I do remember those, but when the Athlon came out, those plans just disappeared! I remember looking at the flow charts of how the CPU was set up and being able to have the ALU have three pipelines in parallel! WHOA! Not to mention didn't have to wait the 1 clock cycle for the instruction to enter the pipeline! man.. that was awesome. And here AMD bought the rights from DEC (Digital Elec Corp) of their Alpha CPU, that's how they got the Athlon core developed. Here Intel was at I think it was 350mhz with the Pentium III but the Athlon was at 600mhz! good memories!!

and your post about the dual celerons.. I had a guy in college who had that.. it was pretty sweet! But when I got the Athlon bye bye celeron.. lol

Yep, I had a Slot 1 P3 866 on an ABIT board while my buddy and roommate had an Athlon Slot A 850 I think? He was the AMD guy, while I was Intel, hahha. He was pro ATI graphics and I was pro NVidia. I had a Riva TNT, TNT2 and then a Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra, which had the blue heatsinks on the RAM! Before that, I had an OG Voodoo, then a Voodoo 2. My buddy with the dual celerons had The Voodoo Banshee.

 

[OVERKILL]

DOS (pre windows 95OSR2) could handle upto 2GB partitions and upto 8GB HDD, although many BIOSes of the era had limits of around 500MB, later 2GB, then later on around 8GB. Although with a dynamic disk overlay software like Ontrack Disk Manager installed at the beginning of the drive the BIOS limit could be exceeded.

Yup, I used Ontrack for my 1.6GB WD drive in my 486, it came with the drive on a 3.5" floppy.

 

[researcher]

Yep, I had a Slot 1 P3 866 on an ABIT board while my buddy and roommate had an Athlon Slot A 850 I think? He was the AMD guy, while I was Intel, hahha. He was pro ATI graphics and I was pro NVidia. I had a Riva TNT, TNT2 and then a Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra, which had the blue heatsinks on the RAM! Before that, I had an OG Voodoo, then a Voodoo 2. My buddy with the dual celerons had The Voodoo Banshee.

awesome memories!! yup I was pro Nvidia at the time. tnt2, oh ya.. It was moving so fast that you'd buy something and 2 months later, BAM! something even better. good times!!

 

[OVERKILL]

awesome memories!! yup I was pro Nvidia at the time. tnt2, oh ya.. It was moving so fast that you'd buy something and 2 months later, BAM! something even better. good times!!

It was nuts. The other thing was the rate at which hard drive sizes were increasing. I still have a few old WD's from the IDE->SATA era that had the 3.5" HDD power connector along with the SATA ones, for folks with older PSU's. I also have an old ABIT "Serialize" or something adapter that allowed you to connect an IDE HDD to SATA.

Oh, I'm chuckling here, I had a pile of crap system (was an Intel Socket 478 RAMBUS system, ABIT board) that I repurposed as a home server using some massive HP PCI SCSI card (it was the length of the case, and the case was a full tower ATX Aopen case) and some drives I salvaged. They were like WD 8GB drives I think? I built this ridiculous RAID 5 array using like 7 drives, the system must have weighed 100+lbs, hahahah, but it was SCSI so it was super cool! I had Fedora on it, IIRC.

 

[blufeb95]

I think I got the memory shakes reading that.

BIOS limit comes to mind. Good gawd. 1990 or so??

BIOS limits were a problem throughout the nineties, it's like they'd raise the threshold but during the lifetime of a machine you wanted to put a larger drive in that exceeded the threshold. Although if you were just using it as a secondary drive, I find 9x and Linux didn't mind drives that exceeded the BIOS limit although you would often have to use a third party partitioning software for 9x. Like Windows 98 seemed to do just fine if you kept booting partition within the BIOS limit and then just used the rest as another partition for storage, but Windows NT/2000 on the other hand if the drive size did not match the BIOS size loved to kernel panic while booting regardless if the partition was in the first part of the drive or not. I think by the Pentium 4/AXP era most boards supported proper 48bit LBA and had no problem with any drives upto 2TB.

 

[Pablo]

So my SB set up wouldn't be recognized. I could play audio through it but no controls. Tried stuff like BIOS disabling stock audio etc.....all drivers working WTH?? Nothing.

So I just created a new device profile in SB ProStudio and it works. Odd

I'm watching HD version of Pink Floyd LIVE Pompeii HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. FULL SCREEN!!

Best concert ever and I saw the displays in Pompeii just a couple weeks ago. Runs perfectly.

 

[medunko]

How to explain .,…in you are not a gamer, the things are easy, just you need a budget for the pc and upgrade monitor too. I mean if you build your system alone you always can make some some mistake and that way time is wasted, searching a solution etc.
So, in few words upper mid range monitor and upper mid range build pc - dell, hp, not Lenovo( in our company 200 pc’ from 500 have some problems, noisy fans, sticking knobs, etc.)
Of course if you love building yourself a pc, that’s another case

 

[Pablo]

How to explain .,…in you are not a gamer, the things are easy, just you need a budget for the pc and upgrade monitor too. I mean if you build your system alone you always can make some some mistake and that way time is wasted, searching a solution etc.
So, in few words upper mid range monitor and upper mid range build pc - dell, hp, not Lenovo( in our company 200 pc’ from 500 have some problems, noisy fans, sticking knobs, etc.)
Of course if you love building yourself a pc, that’s another case

You know it's simply not the case..

I am willing to accept some games are resource using to the extreme. But it's not like there aren't other PC uses that are demanding.

I like good sounds and video while I'm changing/or editing a photo, with a CAD file open. Try that on anything close to a budget system.

 

[researcher]

It was nuts. The other thing was the rate at which hard drive sizes were increasing. I still have a few old WD's from the IDE->SATA era that had the 3.5" HDD power connector along with the SATA ones, for folks with older PSU's. I also have an old ABIT "Serialize" or something adapter that allowed you to connect an IDE HDD to SATA.

Oh, I'm chuckling here, I had a pile of crap system (was an Intel Socket 478 RAMBUS system, ABIT board) that I repurposed as a home server using some massive HP PCI SCSI card (it was the length of the case, and the case was a full tower ATX Aopen case) and some drives I salvaged. They were like WD 8GB drives I think? I built this ridiculous RAID 5 array using like 7 drives, the system must have weighed 100+lbs, hahahah, but it was SCSI so it was super cool! I had Fedora on it, IIRC.

oh man.. now you're really bring back memories.. rambus.. didn't they nickname that ramBUST? lol.. and you're right it was nuts.. 40gig hard drives.. then 60.. then 100.. almost exponential growth! awesome to think my usb flash drive is bigger than those hard drives! awesome memories!!

I tell ya.. since we're onto memories.. I had a dell 1028L 17" monitor from back then, kept it around since I liked how it displayed text (very easy to read).. and wanted to see how long it would last. Finally died in 20! that's 1997 until 2020! Not a bad life, but I'm happy with my LCD flat panel, a lot less wattage!

 

[researcher]

Pablo slips out of the conversation.....

oh and by the way.. since you're the OP on this thread, can't be rude here... glad to hear you got the computer fixed!

 

[OVERKILL]

oh man.. now you're really bring back memories.. rambus.. didn't they nickname that ramBUST? lol.. and you're right it was nuts.. 40gig hard drives.. then 60.. then 100.. almost exponential growth! awesome to think my usb flash drive is bigger than those hard drives! awesome memories!!

I tell ya.. since we're onto memories.. I had a dell 1028L 17" monitor from back then, kept it around since I liked how it displayed text (very easy to read).. and wanted to see how long it would last. Finally died in 20! that's 1997 until 2020! Not a bad life, but I'm happy with my LCD flat panel, a lot less wattage!

I had a legit Sony Trinitron 17" I bought in 1998 using my student loan, lol. That was still kicking around my parent's place until the mid 2010's, I think my dad threw it out when they moved.

When I moved back to Ontario, I bought a Mitsubishi 21" Trinitron (or maybe it was a 24?), it was MASSIVE. I then bought another and had two of these "huge" screens, that probably exceeded the weight capacity of my desk, hahahah.

Yeah, RAMBUS was a great theory that got its rear kicked by the incumbent, who was able to overcome the purported issues of cross-talk and leakage that was claimed to make RDRAM superior (being serial vs parallel). RIMM's also got HOT!! I have several here still, along with some ABIT dummy sticks that you had to put in the unused slots if you weren't populating all of them.

Here are some flashbacks from my collection:

 

[blufeb95]

Yeah, RAMBUS was a great theory that got its rear kicked by the incumbent, who was able to overcome the purported issues of cross-talk and leakage that was claimed to make RDRAM superior (being serial vs parallel). RIMM's also got HOT!! I have several here still, along with some ABIT dummy sticks that you had to put in the unused slots if you weren't populating all of them.

View attachment 185484

On the P4 RAMBUS was the only good memory to start with, because of the QDR bus architecture SD-RAM was a major bottleneck for the platform, when they released the DDR boards it made RAMBUS not worth the extra and when the dual channel DDR platforms came out RAMBUS was completely dead.