I've been playing with a P3V4X, P3B-F, BE6-II Ver. 2.0, and P3C-E board the last couple of weeks. Verdict: you can't beat Asus boards for one thing. Hefty PCB, very stable, idiot-proof installation. The BE6-II is real flaky and flimsily built. When you boot up, you have to press the DEL key several times to enter the BIOS; sometimes you pass it. The best thing it has going for it is a sensational BIOS and the 440BX chip (plus the ATA100 RAID).
The P3B-F is balls-out the most robust board I've seen. Really fast, snappy, and super stable. It boots up faster than my XP 1650 system. Unfortunately, it doesn't have as many FSB options as the P3V4X (if you got the ICS clock generator) or the BE6-II. But with a chip most boards will do 133-138 FSB with, the P3B-F will probably hit 140, and with a chip that will do 140-148, the P3B-F will hit 150, so who needs it.
The P3V4X is not as quick as the 440BX, but it is very stable compared to the flaky BE6-II. It probably won't go as high as it either. But one good thing is the Alpha P3125 heatsink barely fits the board while clearing the first DIMM. I can't fit the heatsink on the P3B-F, much less the BE6-II, so I'm going to have to grind the fins down and cut away part of the shroud. It's well worth it since in my experience, nothing can touch this sink for cooling. It definitely outperforms any Alpha PAL on a Socket 370, what with the dual fans and huge copper surface. You should see sub 30 idle temps and stress temps rarely exceeding 35 C. The next best thing is the Golden Orb, which I'm currently using on the P3B-F and BE6-II. It is only 2-3 C behind the P3125 and fits all the boards no sweat. I've tried all the other heatsinks, even those with copper insert, and they go well over 45 C with my hot 850E at 1053. It barely hits 40 with the Golden Orb.
But if you have to beg, borrow, or steal, pick up a P3B-F if you can find one cheap on Ebay, preferably the latest 1.04 revision (I found four of 'em here in Japan - not for sale though). My third rig is an overclocked Coppermine, that's why I've been playing around with these boards.
Also, the performance of these boards are really acceptable. All you need is a Coppermine you can get to 900-1000 mhz at around a 133-155 FSB. I have a Radeon 8500 and I can play most my games at 1600x1200x32, all settings maxed, and that includes Ghost Recon, Serious Sam Second Encounter, RTCW, and MOH Allied Assault. The latter is iffy with SDRAM but is actually playable with 512 MB of RDRAM on the P3C-E. QuakeIII is a *****cat on all the boards. The 440BX chipset at 150 FSB really flies. 'Course I'm running the games off a 10K Cheetah U160 drive, and another reason is the video card is your limiting factor at such high resolutions. But a high FSB and fast drive will still get you a lot of mileage with the Coppermines.
