Socket 7 Board Review July 1998

TMC AI5VG+

Baby-AT board, VIA Apollo MVP3 chipset, 1 MB L2 cache, 2x ISA, 4x PCI, AGP slot, 3x DIMM, 2x SIMM , ATX and AT power connector. Voltages: 3.5 to 2.0V.

TMC's baby AT motherboard comes with the VIA Apollo MVP3 chipset and 1 MB L2 cache. As you can imagine its performance is quite good. But the environment is fine as well: Three DIMM sockets on a baby AT board are rather unusual, particularly if two SIMM sockets are available, too. Thanks to the good motherboard design TMC didn't have to reduce the amount of PCI slots. DIPswitches make the CPU configuration pretty easy.

All memory ran fine at 83 MHz, for 100 MHz operation it should be PC-100. The Toshiba PC-66 SDRAM seemed to run properly, but after approximately 15 minutes hang ups occurred.

The TMC board can also be recommended for upgraders who don't want to make compromises neither in performance nor regarding flexibility and features.