Chaintech 5AGM

Anand Tech Report Card Rating
93/A-

The Good

"We don't imitate, We Innovate" - is the logo you'll see on the tiny box of the Chaintech 5AGM, stating Chaintech's intentions and their motivation for making a motherboard.  The 5AGM isn't like a toned down version of any FIC, ABIT, or Tyan motherboard, it is an innovative creation, unique in its class, made for the user, with the user in mind and with quality as a number one concern. 

Staying away from the ATX form factor, Chaintech managed to fit 3 PCI, 3 ISA, and 1 AGP slot onto the Baby AT 5AGM along with 2 DIMM and 2 SIMM slots.  While this leaves very little room for expansion, there isn't much more that could have been done when given the constraints of a Baby AT layout.   In spite of this, Chaintech managed to keep the configuration and setup of the 5AGM plain and simple.  While the board doesn't feature the Jumperless See-Pu Setup notorious for being included on Chaintech motherboards, the jumpers are a breeze to configure for an AT motherboard (location-wise).  The Chaintech manual, albeit reminiscent of the outstanding ABIT manuals, carries Chaintech's unique style across each page of the fairly thick manual.  The documentation includes all the basic information necessary for getting your board up and running, not to mention the sticker included in the rear of the manual that documents all of the major jumper settings and parts of the motherboard.

Chaintech chose to include an extremely useful CD-ROM with the 5AGM.  On the CD-ROM you can find a handful of useful utilities, in addition to the desperately sought-after VIA Bus Master IDE Drivers and the newest version of the VIA AGP Gart VxD, necessary for taking advantage of the sole AGP slot on the motherboard.

For you K6/266 & 300 users out there, the 5AGM does support the required 2.2v core voltage setting so you're not out of luck.   Along with a nice selection of voltage settings, the board also features official and unofficial settings for bus speeds ranging from 50 to 75MHz, unfortunately the 83.3MHz setting is absent from this motherboard as with most VP3 boards.

Dealing with stability, the 5AGM had no problems running the K6/266, Pentium MMX, or 6x86MX at normal and overclocked speeds.   Making this board the ideal AT form factor VP3 for those of you that are concerned with speed/reliability, it is obvious that Chaintech placed those two items at the top of their priority list with this motherboard among other things.  As with most VP3 boards, the Chaintech 5AGM performs much like its competition, however it differs from the rest of the pack in that the overall performance of the 5AGM doesn't show any weaknesses, as the Tyan Trinity did with the Pentium MMX.

The Bad

It seems like an 83MHz bus speed setting is too much to ask from a VP3 based motherboard, so we'll leave that out of "The Bad" section of this review, however the 5AGM's lack of expandability features do leave many AT fans (especially those with HUGE AT cases, looking to fill up a board with peripherals) in the dust with no hope of a solution.  If you don't plan on using too many expansion cards, or memory modules with your newly upgraded system, then you shouldn't have much of a problem with the 5AGM...otherwise, search for a new ATX case.

BIOS Settings

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Corsair PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB Corsair PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: Corsair Microsystems
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.nf-ny.com

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com