Epox MVP3C-M MVP3 Super7 Board

From the looks of the chipset on the MVP3C-M, it would appear to the untrained eye that Epox's newest motherboard was nothing more than an excellent VP3 board, however upon closer inspection the VT82C598AT markings on the CPU to PCI bridge chip itself make it clear that this board means business, as it is a true Super7 motherboard based on the new VIA MVP3 chipset.

The 512KB of 5ns L2 cache on-board is provided through the use of one chip complementing the 8ns Tag RAM.   Due to the size of the L2 Cache in combination with that of the Tag RAM, the cacheable memory area of the MVP3C-M is 128MB, twice that of Intel's TX chipset.   Upon boot-up the standard Award BIOS found on the board makes this clear by listing the cacheable DRAM size after displaying your system configuration information.

Accented by the fairly thorough Epox manual, the MVP3C-M manages to make your initial introduction to the world of Epox products a pleasant one at the least, courtesy of their traditional "user friendly" features.  At the top of this list is the newly revised Easy Setting Dual Jumper (ESDJ) CPU Setup which easily replaces the need for a Jumperless CPU Setup.  Using a single jumper, especially the attractively colored green jumpers with elongated handles Epox provides for those "hard to reach areas," you can select the clock multiplier from a set ranging from 2.0x - 5.0x.  Moving up the CPU Configuration Jumper Block on the board you can use another jumper to select the bus speed, ranging from 60 to a fully operational 100MHz setting.

The quality of the MVP3C-M couldn't be better for a board of this caliber, not only does Epox package the board with the latest AGP Gart and VIA Bus Mastering Drivers but they also paid special attention to the engineering qualities of their newest pride and joy.  Their attention to detail is represented by the rock-solid stability, especially when overclocked, and not to mention when using the previously unstable 100MHz bus speed.  During the extensive testing that was performed with the MVP3C-M, the test system never once exhibited any sort of erratic behavior while operating under even the most extreme conditions, where most motherboards would crack under pressure, the MVP3C-M continued to function flawlessly

Naturally, the performance of this motherboard using the 100MHz Front Side Bus Frequency is unparalleled by anything out today, simply using the 100MHz bus (which worked fine on both Intel and AMD processors; the Cyrix 6x86MX tested was a MX-200+ which is notorious for not being an overclocker's chip, and therefore didn't make it to the lowest setting of 100 x 2.0) increases overall system performance by a factor of 8 - 13% in Business Applications and Games.

But before you get too excited, there are a few things that need to be fixed with the MVP3C-M before it makes its official release...let's take a look at those before making the final decision on this board.