Slot 1 Chipset Comparison

Tekram P6Pro-A5 With VIA Apollo Pro

As mentioned above, the Tekram motherboard allows the main memory to run at the AGP clock. This of course makes it possible to use PC-66 SDRAM memory, so you have two ways of saving money: First a VIA Apollo Pro board is much cheaper than Intel BX or LX boards, second you can avoid buying new PC-100 memory.

The Winstone performance is as fast as with the KA-6100 (and some slower than good boards with Intel BX chipset), but there was an interesting phenomenon with the game benchmarks: At 66 MHz FSB the benchmarks are as fast as we would expect it, but at 100 MHz all results were clearly slower (using a Voodoo² card). Another run with a Riva128 card shows that the board can't be condemned for this. There seems to be some problem with the Voodoo² at 66 MHz FSB or with some drivers. I added a chart with the according benchmarks to show you that the difference between 66 and 100 MHz memory clock is really small in deed.

The board has 5 PCI slots, but only 3 DIMM sockets. But it is also the first Apollo Pro board which is suited for overclockers: Besides the standard clock speeds of 66 and 100 MHz you can also chose 75, 95, 112, 124 and even 133 MHz FSB! I did not do detailed testings, but the only clock speed which seems not to be absolutely reliable is 133 MHz.