BUt if he does that he has to deal with the Super7 problems, whereas if he
goes with an intel board they were quite a bit more stable.And there's no
added benefit of the Super7 board when slowed down to 66mhz to begin with.
We're looking at two types of info here, generalities and specifics...
In general, a Super-7 board will run an earlier Pentium processor.
Specifically, some boards are more versatile than others when it comes
to tweaking the voltage, multiplier, etc.
In general, the build quality of socket 7 was higher because at the
time it was the high-end PC platform, while Super-7 was a value
platform. This generality is very often incorrect though, there were
many good and bad boards in both eras. Today we have hindsight and
can better judge a board's quality, compatiblity, bugs, features, etc,
so given enough time to wade though the info, a good choice can be
made IF these boards can be found. While there were some
compatibility issues with Super-7 boards, it's important to remember
that those AGP and PCI devices having compatibility problems weren't
necessarily "more compatible" with the older non-super platform, but
rather were more compatible with the Intel alternative of the time,
the BX chipset.
To say the Super-7 boards were instable is incorrect, there was
nothing inherant in the technology that causes instability, but if a
poor board or poor power supply, memory, etc, were used to build a
low-end system (as often happened) then of course stability might
suffer. There were some really nasty pre-super-7 and BX boards too.
There is much benefit to running a Pentium processor on a Super-7
board if a decent board is used. Putting a Pentium CPU in a Super-7
board will almost always result in higher performance than the older
platform.
Here are a few benefits of Super 7:
----------------------------------------------
Super-7 usually allowed undervolting the CPU, so it's possible to run
it passively cooled given the right CPU.
FSB of 100MHz is supported. Many Pentiums could run on 100Mhz FSB
with suitable lowered multiplier.
Low (and somtimes high) density PC100 memory could be used, making it
possible to run 256MB or more cached, higher-performance memory,
cheaper.
Onboard L2 cache chips were more mature, could run faster timings per
MHz, so a Super-7 board could in theory have higher L2 cache
performance at same FSB MHz as the older non-Super boards.
UATA always supported, and last generation boards even supported
ATA66, and of course higher capacity HDD.
They are newer, not as near the end of their expected lifespan... all
boards "wear out" eventually.
AGP slot, AGP video useage will reduce PCI bus usage. A PCI video card
is always using the PCI bus, reduces throughput of IDE controllers.
Pntentially reduced energy usage and cooler running- Super-7 boards
always used switching voltage regulators for CPU power, and "usually"
made use of 3.3V power from power supply for other components. In
contrast, many non-super boards used linear regulators for CPU power,
and even when they were switching regulators, often the memory
regulators for SDRAM were still linear, having to reduce to 3.3V from
5V. Also the AGP video allows 3.3V power instead of regulation down
from 5V. Add to this the evolution of power management and as a whole
it could be expected that a Super-7 board would use less energy,
create less heat, per same performance.
Whether these benefits are enough to choose one platform over the
other certainly depends on the role of the system, and budget,
availability of parts... If someone already had a box full of SIMMs
and an AT case, power supply, that might be a good enough reason to
build a non-super Pentium box, but on the other hand it's not too hard
or expensive to find old ATX cases, low-wattage power supplies, and
smaller SDRAM memory modules... rightabout now these parts are being
thrown away.
Dave
