FIC VA-503+ Super 7 Motherboard
Reviewed by Poh Leng Wee (1/10/98)

<Introduction><The Good><The Test>
<The Bad><Conclusion><Rating>

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Introduction

FIC which stands for First International Computer is one of the computer manufacturer in Taiwan that is pretty diversified in their production line. Not only do they manufacture mainboards for volume sale, they also manufacture notebooks, scanners, modems and many other computer add-on cards. With their long history as a mainboard manufacturer, it is hence experted for them to produce top end motherboard. And this board is not a disappointment.

However, for Singapore context, FIC mainboards have not been that common around. But just a few years back, FIC should be a name that all Cyrix 6x86 cpus user are familiar with. I remember that their board base on the VP2 chipset was a hot seller. However, with the introduction of low cost intel cpu, the trend towards cyrix cpus are slowly dying away and this in some indirect way might have move users away from FIC's mainboard (noted for it's ability to run Cyrix cpu much better than other equivalent brand).

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The Good

The first impression that strikes me is that this board contains many many jumpers(too many to count :Þ).This might be a turn-off for some people. However, I feel that in some ways, it give the users many different setting configurations so as to make the board as stable and as fast as it can be. And this board is not a disappointment, it is one of the fastest super 7 board I have tested so far.

Another feature that is not found on other similar board is the special linear burst ability for Cyrix cpu. Hence, Cyrix cpus should run fastest on this board.

Besides this, this board also allows you to have different ram timing settings. This allows user to try out different configurations settings for their ram. And a point to note is that this board still supports 4 SIMM modules so all those upgraders out there who are on a budget can still make use of their old EDO ram.

Another feature for upgraders is that this board (one of the few) supports both AT and ATX power supply. Hence upgraders who do not want to spend money on a new ATX casing can still use this board on their old AT casing.

Like other similar MVP3 board, this particular board also uses the CE version of the chipset and can support Intel i740 graphics chipset with no problem.

Last point I want to raise is that this board is the newest revision which is version 1.2 and comes with 1MB L2 cache.

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The Test

The test was conducted with two AMD chips, the K6-2 333 and K6-2 350. Different CPU bus speed was tested.

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 333 Mhz @ 3.5 x 95 Mhz

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 350 Mhz @ 3.5 x 100 Mhz

Besides running both chips at their recommended setting, I also tested out other possible settings which includes overclocking the chips. The K6-2 333 used in these particular test was almost not overclockable at all. But the 350 chip perform better in overclocking. However, the 1000 MIPS mark could not be broken for the 350 chip as any higher setting than 380 Mhz was not successful.

Brief Summary of Overclocking/Alternative Settings
of K6-2 333 and K6-2 350 Mhz
(Using a large heatsink/fan)

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The Bad

After setting up the board, I could not really find any bad points with this board, it was running fast and stable at the recommended settings. However, when I tried to get it running at 112Mhz or 124Mhz and using the settings recommended by the manual, I could not get any of the two cpus used to boot at all. This could be a turn off for users who would like to try out higher bus speed for their cpu.

Secondly, as mention earlier, the numbers of jumpers to change might make people irritated with this board. However, personally, I find that it is really not a great hustle to change the jumpers.

The last point, which can be pretty trivial is that this board only supports 2 DIMM modules. Hence, only a max of 512MB of ram is supported on the DIMM module. However, I dun forsee anyone using Super 7 board to actually require more that 512MB of ram.

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Conclusion

After testing out and running a number of super 7 mainboards, I discovered that the performance margin between all of them are pretty thin. However, the VA-503+ is definitely a good buy as its performance is either on par or better than the rest of the boards I have manage to test. It is especially true for cyrix users and I will recommend all cyrix user to consider this board as one of their option.

Besides, I will recommend this board to all those upgraders out there who are on a budget. Old casing and SIMM ram can still be used by this board therefore making it a low cost upgrade solution for them.

MOTHERBOARD RATING

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