Motherboard: ASUS P3B-F 
Revision: 1.03 
BIOS: 1008 beta 04 
 
I need to know what the fatest processor (CPU speed ex.800MHz and BUS
ex. 100 or 133MHz) this motherboard will support.  I have a PIII
1GHz/100 coppermine slot-1 in mind to buy, but in my searching I could
not get a definitive answer whether my mobo would support it.  If it
supports faster PIII's then by all means I would prefer upgrading to the fastest.

Hello,

Unfortunately, as per Asus's support website, and their P3B-F WebBook
lists the maximum speed for a CPU for this motherboard as 600mHz which
is 6.0 x 100mHz (the maximum bus speed) supported by this motherboard.
If you turn to page 7 of the WebBook (rightclick on the WebBook after
opening it, and hit "Go To" you can go directly to the 7th page.


Search Strategy:

went directly to Asus' website


Additional Links:

Asus P3B-F WebBook:
http://usa.asus.com/mb/archives/mbp3bf.zip


Thank you for the opportunity to answer your question, if you require
more information, please clarify the question, or if you find this
answer satisfactory, please feel free to rate it. Thank you!

skermit-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by skermit-ga on 04 Nov 2002 19:05 PST

Having built many systems from scratch, if the maximum multiplier is
7.5x on this motherboard, the fastest slot-1 chip you can put in is a
750mHz processor. This is because "All processors produced after
August (week 30), 1998 are multiplier locked, in that the multiplier
cannot be changed at all, regardless of motherboard settings."

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=87

meaning if you put in your 1gHz chip (7.5x 133mHz) will not run at
1gHz. Your mobo's maximum bus speed is 100mHz so if you wanted to you
MIGHT be able to run it at 7.5x 100mHz or 750mHz, effectively
underclocking it. But with voltage differences, it most probably
wouldn't work. You asked for a definitive answer of whether or not
your mobo would support your 1gHz chip, and the definitive answer is
no. I did wish you requested a clarification before rating this answer
so low, and ignoring the information about maximum bus speed that I
did put into my answer.

skermit-ga

As I indicated in the original message, I had already run a search, I
thought that would imply going directly to ASUS's website, but I guess
it did not.  I recommend this certain researcher not take on anymore
technical questions, because the search strategy used was poor for the
technical level of my question.

Anyways I thought I would give this service a shot, to at least see
what it was all about.  Needs work.  For anyone pulling this question
up in a search, yes the p3b-f will support processors above 600MHz.

Hello Robert,

Anandtech
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=100

Your bios version, along with your board revision support at least a
1.1 Ghz processor. (highest reference I could find)

The FSB speed should be capped out at 150Mhz (probably 133) , and if I
can find a reference for that I'll drop it in here for you.

I think ASUS has probably not made any updates to the files in
question for some time.

Hope this helps -

SgtCory