October '97 Socket-7 Motherboard Comparison

Motherboard Business Winstone 97 ABIT AX5 2.2 58.9 ABIT IT5H 1.5 58.1 ABIT IT5H 2.0 56.9 ABIT PD5N 55.6 ABIT PX5 Failed ABIT TX5 Failed ABIT TX5N 57.1 AOpen AP58 56.1 AOpen AX5T-2 56.2 AOpen AX5T-3.1 56.4 ASUS TXP4-X 56.5 Chaintech 5SDA 55.9 Chaintech 5SIM 55.6 Chaintech 5TDM2 56.1 Chaintech 5TTL 56.4 Chaintech 5TTM Not Supported Chaintech 5TTM1 Not Supported DFI P5XV3 Not Supported DFI P5XV3 (AGP) Not Supported EPoX P55-VP3 Not Supported FIC PA-2007 Not Supported FIC PA-2010+ 52.0 FIC PA-2011 Not Supported FIC PA-2012 Not Supported FIC PA-2012 (AGP) Not Supported FIC PT-2007 Not Supported Megatrends HX83 56.4 MTech MIG R539 Not Supported MTech MIG R540 Failed MTech MIG R541 Failed MTech Mustang R534F 54.0 QDI Titanium 1B Not Supported Shuttle HOT-565 57.0 Shuttle HOT-567 55.9 Shuttle HOT-569 56.4 Shuttle HOT-571 Failed Shuttle HOT-603 Failed Supermicro P5MMA 55.6 Supermicro P5MMS98 Failed Tyan Titan Turbo S1573S Not Supported

Initially, overclocked to 208MHz (83 x 2.5) ABIT takes the early lead with 4 of their 7 motherboards placing in the top 5 spots, an amazing accomplishment on the part of the small Taiwanese based company.  Bringing in a Pentium II - like score of 58.9, the ABIT AX5 (2.2) quickly fades the line between AMD's K6 and Intel's power packed Pentium II.  Coming in a close 2nd place is the HX based ABIT IT5H 1.5, due to the lack of SDRAM support by the Intel HX chipset, the IT5H tests used EDO RAM as opposed to the SDRAM which was used in all other tests.  In theory this factor should penalize the performance of the IT5H, however as you can see by the scores, even in spite of this fact, the IT5H beats some of the "more advanced" TX motherboards. 

Once again the Shuttle HOT-565, coming in 4th place, manages to defeat a great percentage of the newly released TX motherboards as well as the SiS 5582 based AOpen AP58.  Unfortunately none of the VP2/VP3 based motherboards tested supported the 83MHz bus speed (with the exception of the highly unstable Shuttle HOT-603 which failed the Winstone tests) therefore we can't get a wide variety of scores in this particular test...final decision here?  Intel all the way...which is quite interesting since the AMD K6 would be one of the last processors one would expect to shine with an Intel chipset.