Tuesday, November 30, 1999

Introduction

This Autumn, I expected to be flooded with a deluge of i820 motherboards. While such boards have begun trickling onto the market, it's rather been a deluge of motherboards based on the VIA Apollo Pro133, and Pro133A chipsets that have flooded the marketplace. The newest among these is the TMC TI6NBFV+, which makes use of the VIA Apollo Pro133 set. As with all similar boards, the TI6NBFV+ supports PC133 memory, and ATA66 drives. Without further ado, then, let's take a look at the latest offering from Mycomp-TMC.

The features

Instead of opting for a 5/2/1 configuration, TMC has rather gone with a 6/1/1 design. Thus 6 PCI slots, 1 ISA slot, and 1 AGP port are present on the TI6NBFV+. Three 168-pin DIMM sockets also permit the installation of a maximum of 768MB of memory.

Configuration of the TI6NBFV+ is accomplished from the BIOS menu labeled "CPU Speed Setting", where we find options for adjusting the clock frequency, and the clock multiplier. On the motherboard itself, jumper JP7 permits clock frequency to be chosen according to the processor detected, or force the system to 100Mhz, or to 133Mhz through setting jumper JP10. Also in the BIOS, in the "Chipset Features Setup" menu, an option permits the operating frequency of the memory bus to be set equal to that of the system bus, and to add or subtract 33Mhz from that figure.

There is no option for adjusting the processor's core voltage with this board.

Available clock frequencies include: 100Mhz, 113Mhz, 122Mhz, 126Mhz and 133Mhz with clock multiplier of between 3X and 8X in steps of .5X.

Next: Additional features.