AsusTek P/I P55 TXP4
Asus still is able to learn, that's fine. For some months now every baby AT board comes with PS/2 mouse cable as well. Better late than never, I think. The PC 97 compliant boards also have an excellent fan on the item list. The new TXP4 board seems to be a low end version of the TX97 series. It is coming without CPU temp surveillance, without Asus Media Bus and has a minimum size. Nevertheless, 4x PCI / 3x ISA slots, 4x PS/2 and 2x DIMM sockets should be sufficent for most users. Good to see that Asus spent some more money for the PS/2 memory sockets with metal clip. 83 MHz bus clock is selectable, nevertheless running anything but stable. Cyrix 6x86MX PR233 (187 MHz) only ran fine with the slower SDRAM Ras-to-Cas latency of 3/3 clocks. I could make use of the faster 2/2 settings only for the 66 MHz CPUs. Quality is Asus-like, but its performance is nothing what has to be praised. Future BIOSes could surely improve this.
No picture, sorry. Rev. 1.x.
AT format; AT power supply; Intel 430TX; 3x ISA, 4x PCI; 4x SIMM, 2x DIMM; Award flash BIOS; 512 kB PB-Cache (6 ns); external frequencies: 50, 55, 60, 66, 75, 83 MHz (83 unstable); BF2 jumper equipped, I/O chip: Winbond; busmaster Ultra DMA 2 or PIO 4 onboard; FDC onboard; 2x serial 16550; 1x EPP/ECP parallel; 1x PS/2 mouse; 2x USB; IrDA support; core voltages: 3.2V, 2.9V, 2.8V, 2.7V, 2.0V.
AsusTek TX97-E
As the name says, this board meets the Microsoft PC 97 standard. It's also available as 'TX97' without the 'E', this means one additional ISA slot, three instead of two DIMM sockets and no PS/2 sockets. If you plan to use future socket 7 CPUs, be aware of the BF2 jumper being equipped (like on my revision 1.11), it enables clock multipliers up to x5.5. Performance and quality is excellent as always and the price is too high as always. The board features external clock support up to 75 MHz. What you should know are the jumper settings for 83 MHz: (FS0, FS1, FS2) 2-3, 1-2, 1-2. Asus does not mention this clock anywhere, so they don't guarantee its reliability. Nevertheless, everything worked fine and fast as well. You can enable all performance enhancing options in the BIOS, just SDRAM speculative read lead to instability under Windows NT. Due to the PC 97 compilance, additional features are fan monitoring, temperature and voltage monitoring and modem remote on.
No picture again, so sorry. Rev. 1.11
AT format; AT power supply; Intel 430TX; 3x ISA, 4x PCI; 4x SIMM, 2x DIMM; Award flash BIOS; 512 kB PB-Cache (6 ns); external frequencies: 50, 60, 66, 75, 83 MHz (83 undocumented); BF2 jumper equipped, I/O chip: Winbond; busmaster Ultra DMA 2 or PIO 4 onboard; FDC onboard; 2x serial 16550; 1x EPP/ECP parallel; 1x PS/2 mouse; 2x USB; IrDA support; core voltages: 3.2V, 2.9V, 2.8V, 2.5V, 2.0V. This board meets PC 97 specifications; SDMS support ver. 4.0.
AsusTek TX97-XE
This board has exactly the same specifications as the TX97-E, but comes in ATX format. I will add the benchmark results from the TX97 and TX97-E as soon as I get them. Strange to say why Asus does not implant support for bus clocks beyond 66 MHz into their ATX format boards, the same is the XP55T2P4. As a matter of fact, higher clock rates definitely are selectable (75 MHz: FS0, FS1, FS2 at 2-3, 1-2, 1-2), but are unbearably instable, what a pity. Everything else is Asus-like, nothing to complain about. 4x ISA as well as 4x PCI are standard for ATX boards, 4x PS/2 and 2x DIMM should also be enough. This board is also available with on-board soundblaster compatible sound system. As written above, this board is currently the fastest for the Pentium MMX.
Picture is missing, I know.
ATX format; ATX power supply; Intel 430TX; 4x ISA, 4x PCI; 4x SIMM, 2x DIMM; Award flash BIOS; 512 kB PB-Cache (6 ns); external frequencies: 50, 60, 66, 75, 83 MHz (75 and 83 MHz unstable); BF2 jumper equipped, I/O chip: Winbond; busmaster Ultra DMA 2 or PIO 4 onboard; FDC onboard; 2x serial 16550; 1x EPP/ECP parallel; 1x PS/2 mouse; 2x USB; IrDA support; core voltages: 3.2V, 2.9V, 2.8V, 2.1V. This board meets PC 97 specifications; SDMS support ver. 4.0.
