Which motherboard to go with celery 1.2A?

Which motherboard should I buy to go with a tulatin celeron 1.2a?
I plan to hit at least 1600 on 133 fsb using watercooling.
I realised many people either use the Abit ST6 or the Asus TUSL2-C. Which of the 2 is better? or are there better choices?

Also, i know all newer Asus motherboards have SMBus connectors on them. Does the Abit have them too? I might make a Maxim IC diode reader for reading watertemps.
This is gonna be my watercooling experiment rig as well, so the SMBus would be nice as I don't fancy hacking the SMBus from the ram slots.

ABit ST6 (one of the best, if not the best board paired with the 1.2 Celly)
ABit VH6T (cheaper, uses via chipset, rock solid)

Asus TUSL2-C (not recommended)

Gigabyte 60XET/XET-C (not necessary unless you are certain of getting high fsbs. Better suited for the 1/1.1GHz Cellys)

OK forget the Asus. But whats the difference between the Gigabyte and the Abit ST6?
And why is the gigabyte is better suited for higher fsb and the Abit isn't? So if the Gigabyte can go higher fsb, wouldn't that be the better choice?

Not much. The Gigabyte does not require the voltage mod trick to increase the voltage increment so it saves you the trouble. The gigabyte (XET version) has dual bios and some creative onboard audio instead of the AC97 onboard audio.

Well since the Gigabyte apparently utilizes 1/5 and 1/6 dividers, which the ABit doesn't have, you can go to 150+ fsb without running your PCI components out of spec. Your components will thank you if you can get your chip to go 170fsb, especially if they are really sensitive and don't like to run high PCI speeds.

The Gigabyte would be a better choice if you do have a chip that will literally "move". Since it has become scarce to find, you'll have a hard time finding it. The ABit is still a great choice.

What about the gigabyte XT version? I'm having problems locating an XET. Does the XT have the 1/5 dividers?
Like I said, i plan to go at LEAST 133 fsb minimum, but if i can go higher I wouldn't mind

Get the ST6. i can hit 190fsb with the ST6 with only 1/4 dividers. If you get any of the celerons the ST6 will be way more than enough mobo for you I assure you. I have owned a 1.0a, 1.2 and 1.2PIII tualatin. Here is what my tualatin did on the ST6.

I'm with Ol' Man on this one. The ST-6 is all the board you need. One thing I will say is don't count your clock speeds before they hatch...Look at my sig...1.2 celeron and i'm only at 130mhz FSB. The chip needs more then just water for cooling before i'll be able to go any higher...with that said the gigabyte is just a rediculous choice for a "high fsb overclock" and the 1.2 celeron. I highly doubt you'll be hitting high fsb speeds unless your one of the crazy japanese and their liquid N2 lol. The Abit is a more practical choice. I owned a Gigabyte 60xm7E and I swear i'll never buy another gigabyte again. It was a horrible board, very unstable and overclock Unfriendly. The dual bios is just a market ploy to make you say "wooo lookie that" You will never use it and I've hard reports of them not working half the time anyways. My Abit board is the best mobo i've ever owned, and with my new 156w pelt I'm hoping I can overclock my chip some more. I suspect it's the chip and cooling that is holding me back. others with the abit board have had much more success then I am having. which is why i suspect the chip just isn't a real ringer. Watch in the next few weeks for me to post my results with a 156w peltier added.

Why do you guys trash the Asus? I'm searching a good P3 mobo, too, for the CuMine P3 1GHz that's lying around after the 1.2G Tualeron purchase. I already have a TuSL2C, and I'm quite happy with it. I did 154FSB with ease on the board and that OC was only limited by the crappy components (VGA and RAM)... In asynchronous mode, the CPU got quite high.

Right now, My choice is between the Abit, or another Asus.

Gr, SuSEQ

I don't really have a problem with the asus. Except for that damn siren sound when I start it sometimes. The tualatin voltage adjustment issue was pretty much fixed with the newer bioses, The first bios that came with this board looked like a copy of the Cusl2-c bios anyway. Now they've fixed it for cumines and tualatins.

I'm also very happy with my ASUS TUSL-2C with my current chip but it did take some tweaking and does lack some helpful options like no 1/4 PCI divisor before 133FSB. I also had to get a hacked bios to run AGP card in 4X mode at my current FSB setting...it defaults to AGP 2X after going over a certain FSB. But it works great with the 1.0A

deez said:

I'm also very happy with my ASUS TUSL-2C with my current chip but it did take some tweaking and does lack some helpful options like no 1/4 PCI divisor before 133FSB. I also had to get a hacked bios to run AGP card in 4X mode at my current FSB setting...it defaults to AGP 2X after going over a certain FSB. But it works great with the 1.0A

Click to expand...

I have that tweaked BIOS, too... It also takes care of the memory settings: when the Tusl2C is just a tiny bit overclocked, the board defaults to very conservative mem timings... The tweaked BIOS sets those at the ones you selected again. And it is possible to overclock the board with synchronous memory/FSB clocks above 166 by modifying the bios. Unfortunately, I don't have the page that describes this anymore...

But besides the lack of some BIOS options, there are no other drawbacks as for buying this mobo, right?

Gr, SuSEQ

SuSEQ said:

Unfortunately, I don't have the page that describes this anymore...

But besides the lack of some BIOS options, there are no other drawbacks as for buying this mobo, right?

Gr, SuSEQ

Click to expand...

here ya go http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/tweak/i815twken.htm

Cant think of anything else bad about the ASUS...its an extremely stable board

deez said:

here ya go http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/tweak/i815twken.htm

Cant think of anything else bad about the ASUS...its an extremely stable board

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, but I already have that BIOS... I meant that it was possible to OC above 166MHZ CPU FSB, whilst having the mem FSB at the same frequency. On the Cusl/TuSL boards, CPU clocks exceeding 166MHz can only be achieved by selecting the 133/100 CPU/Mem setting... Thsi option is rumoured to be overrideable by a BIOS hack with modbin. But (as usual ) Ican't make sense out of that program.

Gr, SuSEQ