Review of Slot 1 Motherboards with Intel 440BX Chipset - Spring 1998

Tekram P6B40-A4X

Tekram is only about entering the motherboard market after making a name with their SCSI adapters. The P6B40 single CPU BX motherboard is small but it still comes with 4 DIMM sockets, which I consider as remarkable.

Onboard features include all that it takes, like all the 'Wake Ups' as well as hardware monitoring.

Compatibility testing was to my surprise quite a pleasure, the P6B40 did not run into any problem at all. Memory testing showed the same good result, the board ran with all three test SDRAMs stable at up to 112 MHz FSB.

Overclocking is possible but not quite that easy, since the FSB can only be choosen between either 66/68/75/83 or 100/103/112/133 MHz depending on the FSB clock the CPU is designed for, so that you need the 'B21 procedure' for getting to 100 MHz FSB or above when using a Celeron or a PII 233-333.

The performance of the board was at a low average level which is the reason why the P6B40 didn't quite make it into the recommendations list.