Socket 7 Board Review July 1998

Tekram P5MVP-A4

ATX motherboard, VIA Apollo MVP3 Chipset, 512 kB L2 Cache, 4 PCI, 2 ISA, AGP Slot. 2 DIMM, 4 SIMM sockets. Voltages: 3.5 - 2.0V.

The first thing I noticed is that the power management cannot be disabled like with the Elitegroup and the Tyan motherboard. Power management is fine, but I always want to disable it whenever I want. Everything else works as expected: without difficulties.

The board's performance can be called normal. With 1 MB L2 cache it would be one of the faster candidates, but Tekram doesn't destine this board for a larger cache. For upgraders the board has four SIMM sockets which can be equipped with FPM or EDO memory.

The board is reliable and all but slow, if you don't care about the power management stuff or get a cheap offer, there's no reason for declining it.