Which socket 370 motherboard?

[unityofsaints]

Hi,

The TUSL2-C and CUSL2 ASUS boards seem to be the most popular - what are the pros and cons of each and are there any others to consider? I'm very interested in this platform but the hardware is difficult to find and expensive (for what it is) so I don't want to pick something that won't work.

[TerraRaptor]

TUSL2-C is natively compatible with tualatin core, CUSL2 requires mods to hardware to run tualatins. On the other hand, TUSL2 won't  run mendocino celerons. I would pick TUSL2 of these two boards. Mendocino celerons are not that popular. 

Another challenge will be to get the following 2 things: IDE-SATA adaptor (to allow high fsb overclocks - native IDE drives won't let you overclock more than 20-30% in a lot of cases) and good memory that is able to go >200MHz CL2-2-2 (that is Quimonda chips of >2007 production - memory performance is crucial with s370). And probably  you should also have several AGP cards as it also may limit your overclock (however, most simple agp cards as GF2MX, GF4MX should allow agp overclocking over 100MHz from stock 66MHz and the problem may be overclocking of AGP over 127-130MHz).

You can look for Gigabyte 6OXET as alternative - these are rather difficult to find but they should be cheaper being considered garbage by many second hand resellers. I was able to hit even more stable overclocks with it but killed it during research.

[unityofsaints]

On 12/21/2018 at 11:27 AM, TerraRaptor said:

TUSL2-C is natively compatible with tualatin core, CUSL2 requires mods to hardware to run tualatins. On the other hand, TUSL2 won't  run mendocino celerons. I would pick TUSL2 of these two boards. Mendocino celerons are not that popular. 

Another challenge will be to get the following 2 things: IDE-SATA adaptor (to allow high fsb overclocks - native IDE drives won't let you overclock more than 20-30% in a lot of cases) and good memory that is able to go >200MHz CL2-2-2 (that is Quimonda chips of >2007 production - memory performance is crucial with s370). And probably  you should also have several AGP cards as it also may limit your overclock (however, most simple agp cards as GF2MX, GF4MX should allow agp overclocking over 100MHz from stock 66MHz and the problem may be overclocking of AGP over 127-130MHz).

You can look for Gigabyte 6OXET as alternative - these are rather difficult to find but they should be cheaper being considered garbage by many second hand resellers. I was able to hit even more stable overclocks with it but killed it during research.

Thanks for the suggestions, that is some great insight. I never knew IDE-SATA adapters were overclocking-relevant, I will definitely be ordering a 2$ one from China now

[havli]

Are PCI VGAs better than AGP for OC?

Also I often used PCI SCSI controller because most of the time XP survived moving to completely different platform which doesn't work with IDE. No idea how that can affect OC though.

[TAGG]

The IDE to SATA adapter explains why I was allways struggeling on 370... I was using native IDE drives

I got the Abit ST6-Raid BTW, was cheaper locally than the ASUS boards and should do decent, so i guess get whatesver your local market offers on the cheap

A good source for the quimondas is mushkins essentials memory, lot of the 256mb single sided and allmost all of the 512MB modules were quimonda

[DR4G00N]

2 hours ago, TAGG said:

The IDE to SATA adapter explains why I was allways struggeling on 370... I was using native IDE drives

Me too, I guess this is what I needed for over 155MHz fsb.

[Strunkenbold]

On 12/24/2018 at 4:10 PM, DR4G00N said:

Me too, I guess this is what I needed for over 155MHz fsb.

I used many IDE drives in the past and every of them managed to let me achieve over 200 MHz FSB. If you struggle at 155 MHz, it's most likely your CPU.  

Only a few CPUs manage over 200 MHz on air. Most need at least SS to achieve this. But for some it's just impossible.

I appreciate all those great tips in this thread. I really never thought that those cheap IDE to SATA adapters are able to handle the high PCI clocks very well. Even though I own such things, I was always too lazy to try out. 

[DR4G00N]

1 hour ago, Strunkenbold said:

I used many IDE drives in the past and every of them managed to let me achieve over 200 MHz FSB. If you struggle at 155 MHz, it's most likely your CPU.  

Only a few CPUs manage over 200 MHz on air. Most need at least SS to achieve this. But for some it's just impossible.

I appreciate all those great tips in this thread. I really never thought that those cheap IDE to SATA adapters are able to handle the high PCI clocks very well. Even though I own such things, I was always too lazy to try out. 

I have a dozen or so 133 fsb chips, I doubt all of them can't do more than ~153 fsb. I didn't get a chance to test the adapter because my cusl2 died. I tired it on my generic i815 board but it didn't seem to help.

[TerraRaptor]

Easiest way to check what limits you is to use different "straps" and low multi coppermine d0. First check fsb limit of cpu with 133/100 and write down clocks for pci (if waza locks system at given fsb - then it is ide limit). Then go 133/133 to find memory limit. Then check 66/100 to see if you can break the pci clocks of 133/100 while staying with dram below limit of 133/133. 

PS. IDE is definitely a problem. Japanese were using IBM fireballs if i'm not mistaken in early 00's which were known to stand 50-55 mhz ide clocks.

[Mr.Scott]

4 hours ago, TerraRaptor said:

Japanese were using IBM fireballs if i'm not mistaken in early 00's which were known to stand 50-55 mhz ide clocks.

You know your stuff. 

Respect

 

[Strunkenbold]

18 hours ago, TerraRaptor said:

PS. IDE is definitely a problem. Japanese were using IBM fireballs if i'm not mistaken in early 00's which were known to stand 50-55 mhz ide clocks.

Didn't some of them did a pll mod for their boards? I guess that should completely take out the problems with the PCI/agp bus.

Thanks for your suggestions. Wish I had time to overclock those systems again.

[TerraRaptor]

1 hour ago, Strunkenbold said:

Didn't some of them did a pll mod for their boards?

Those were turboPLL/JordanPLL to allow overclocking on the boards with no-overclock stock pll ic. I believe you cannot run pci/ide in asynchronous mode if chipset doesn't support it which is the case for i815

[Strunkenbold]

3 hours ago, TerraRaptor said:

Those were turboPLL/JordanPLL to allow overclocking on the boards with no-overclock stock pll ic. I believe you cannot run pci/ide in asynchronous mode if chipset doesn't support it which is the case for i815

I was always looking at this list: http://holicho.lib.net/wcpuidv3/wcpuidv3.htm

I saw some special made boards and they used TurboPLLs on Tusl/Cusl and ST6.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020613021345/http://isweb32.infoseek.co.jp/computer/atomoc/mb_st6.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20030829142535/http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/ha/id25302/cusl2.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20021016083001/http://holicho.lib.net/

But youre correct. Using this on boards which cant run bus speeds asynchronous just dont make sense. So after looking into this today, I think the only fixed input from the pll is for the clock / system time and they used the pll ic to remove the limit of the onboard pll ic. And some have fixed frequency for usb an ps/2. I think I got this wrong for some years now. So today I really learned something. 

Now you and other achieved over 260 Mhz without any pll mods. So this makes me wonder why the japanese boys were so keen on those turbo plls if its actually possible without.

[TerraRaptor]

1 hour ago, Strunkenbold said:

why the japanese boys were so keen on those turbo plls if its actually possible without

External clock may have less jitter/phase noise (i.e. high end audiophile gear sometimes use external clocks for their DAC of a femtosecond grade). That is my guess.  At least, the different quality of pll ic may be the reason why TUSL/CUSL boards have certain difference in max clock between samples - the reason may be not chipset but pll.

GraduS should know more - he was really deep into digging JP forums on s370.

[unityofsaints]

Is the TUSL-M an o.k. alternative? I'm hoping it's a poor man's TUSL2-C, I'm (unsurprisingly) having trouble finding 370 boards here in Australia.

[unityofsaints]

On 12/21/2018 at 11:27 AM, TerraRaptor said:

And probably  you should also have several AGP cards as it also may limit your overclock (however, most simple agp cards as GF2MX, GF4MX should allow agp overclocking over 100MHz from stock 66MHz and the problem may be overclocking of AGP over 127-130MHz).

Just an idea, did anyone ever try the iGPU on for example the CUSL2? Would it allow higher BCLK OCs?

[TerraRaptor]

3 hours ago, unityofsaints said:

Just an idea, did anyone ever try the iGPU on for example the CUSL2?

I had several mobos on i815 with integrated video and they were no go for overclocking. However I was quite noobie that days  so don't know what to expect with proper approach. Video is last thing one should consider with this socket anyway.

[unityofsaints]

What does the CUSL2-C have to offer compared to the two boards mentioned above? It's not nearly as popular on HWBot.

[TerraRaptor]

That is the same pcb with some bells&whistles missing - agp instead agp-pro, no cnr, no integrated vga. Never tried it though. Should be identical to CUSL2 in terms of overclocking.

[TerraRaptor]

13 hours ago, MR. Horse said:

ASUS CUS266

Not sure if it ever existed except some engineering samples. I had only ECS P6S5AT with sis635t and even with PLLmod the experience was not that successful - I  think sis635t must be very picky with RAM (same as pro266 - I had only one ddr stick able to work @195mhz or so - and it was micron 5b not bh5) and won't go >200mhz RAM tight (and as the cpu bus is 64bit, the only advantage of ddr chipsets is to beat i815 with ram frequency).

I would better then investigate i820/i840 and RDRAM - if these would go 250mhz fsb-wise then there may be a chance (but not for every cpu etс). But again, never seen interesting boards for sale (and intel boards lack proper clock generators).

[ObscureParadox]

As above I've seen a couple in the past but passed on them as I was under the impression they'd be slower than a TUSL2-C because nobody had used them. Hindsight I probably should have just got one to try.

[Antinomy]

On 3/28/2019 at 11:19 PM, MR. Horse said:

I have seen a few ASUS CUS266 in the wiled. But they are very rare. One was on ebay last year.

Any proof? Are you sure you're not confusing with CUV266 which is pretty rare but pops out from time to time? AFAIK, CUS266 never hit the market and was only shown as sample at CeBit and Computex...

[Antinomy]

On 3/28/2019 at 2:08 PM, TerraRaptor said:

I would better then investigate i820/i840 and RDRAM - if these would go 250mhz fsb-wise

Very doubt that. More likely for i815 to hit such clocks than 820/840. And performance-wise 820 sucks against SDRAM.

[Antinomy]

@TerraRaptor, very interesting articles:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=64387 (check out 3DMark2001 as integral system performance test and Q3 as memory test)

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=64407

[TASOS]

I have never ever seen an ASUS CUS266 board.

To be honest , i believe it only existed as an exhibit sample.