Socket 7 Board Review July 1998

TMC TI5VG+

ATX board, VIA Apollo MVP3 chipset, 1 MB L2 cache, 2x ISA, 5x PCI, AGP slot, 3x DIMM, 2x SIMM , ATX and AT power connector. Voltages: 3.5 to 2.0V.

The second board we got from TMC is also equipped very well. On the picture you may see only one cache chip. The other is placed on the backside of the motherboard, as it is becoming common with graphic cards as well. The features correspond to those of the baby AT board: DIP switches, 100 MHz only with PC-100 memory and excellent stability. Only one annoying fault bedims the fine image this board has created so far: The Diamond Fire didn't want to run at all. Strangely it works on the baby AT version.

Frustrated I ran Winstone 98 with the ATI card on this board (22.3), the baby AT version AI5VG+ (22.2) and the Soyo board as well (23.0). Another benchmark run with the Asus card verifies the results, but saying the ATX version is faster by 0.1 Winstone points would be small minded in my opinion.

Homepage: http://www.mycomp-tmc.com