If you were to go out and purchase a BX motherboard, you have a number of choices that are truly excellent productions from companies like ABIT, ASUS, and AOpen among others.  The bottom line is that in the BX mainboard market, there can truly be a select few that can don the title "Best Overall Motherboard."  Although the final decision is completely based upon the type of user you are, we generally have a similar set of five or so final candidates for the position.

Unfortunately things are much different in the Super7 market.  The release of the AMD K6-2 in 1998 brought along much hope for the Socket-7 market, however very few mainboard manufacturers ever took AMD's promises seriously.  This resulted in a canceled ABIT Super7 motherboard, and relatively meager production from the other big guns in the motherboard industry, leaving the rest of the world to sit silently in awe while AMD's flagship was run on low-quality Super7 motherboards. 

Not until recently have motherboard manufacturers begun to take the Super7 industry soberly, which is why in the past 6 months alone the market has seen more Super7 motherboard releases than once thought possible.   Among the manufacturers that saw the golden opportunity to release a rare, high-quality Super7 motherboard was Epox with their MVP3C-M and MVP3E-M AT and ATX solutions for the market.  In anticipation of AMD's upcoming K6-3 release next month to go head to head with Intel's Pentium III motherboard manufacturers are jumping the gun on their 3rd generation Super7 boards to meet the release with style, quality, reliability, and the performance that will keep the fiery competition between Super7 and Slot-1 based systems without the aid of motherboard issues to fuel itself.  What is Epox's 3rd generation Super7 board?  Let's meet the MVP3G-M, possibly Epox's ticket to true stardom among Super7 users.

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
84/B-

Do not compare newer ratings to older ones, the newer ratings are much more aggressive

The Good

Is a 5/2/1 expansion slot configuration too much to ask for?  Absolutely not, although it is a rarity in the Super7 motherboard market, the Epox MVP3G-M starts out with the highly demanded 5/2/1 (PCI/ISA/AGP) layout that many Super7 users have been denied for quite some time.
The 5 PCI slots, as with most 5/2/1 motherboards are made possible through the use of VIA's PCI-to-PCI bridge, which essentially allows for concurrent occupation of all 5 PCI slots so long as the peripherals installed are willing to work in such a configuration.  Much like the ATX design of the first MVP3E-M Super7 board from Epox, the 3 DIMM slots present on the board run almost adjacent to the ATX I/O panel at the top of the motherboard, making RAM upgrades quite a simple task on a fully assembled system.
Moving south from the DIMM slots you'll find the VIA MVP3 chipset North Bridge (Revision CE), surrounded by four equidistant capacitors, and bordered by the two 5ns 512KB EliteMT L2 cache chips.  The majority of the real estate on the PCB of the MVP3G-M is left "unsold" to any jumper blocks as the board, like all Epox motherboards, features Epox's Easy Set Jumper Setup, in this case ESDJ: Easy Set Dual Jumper setup.

Through the use of two individual jumpers, one controlling the clock multiplier and the second controlling the FSB frequency, you can completely setup and configure your K6-2 or any other processor on the MVP3G-M within a matter of seconds.  Voltage configuration on-board isn't too big of an ordeal either, a single jumper controls the core voltage setup of your CPU as well.  To top things off, another single jumper, located near the memory banks controls the memory bus frequency, locking it either to the FSB or AGP bus frequency (usually 100MHz or 66MHz respectively).  The total configuration time on the MVP3G-M?  Less than 30 seconds.

The board comes laid out in a very spacious manner as previously mentioned, two 3-pin fan power connectors found their place in the vicinity of the CPU Socket-7 interface to make virtually any cooling configuration an easy install, without having to worry about power supply cable extenders, or other messy case inhabitants.  The CPU socket is fairly isolated, making the installation of the CPU's heatsink/fan combo unrestricted by any components around it. 

The overclocking possibilities on the MVP3G-M are better than most Super7 motherboards, the 112MHz FSB setting on the board seems to be the sweet spot as the stability achieved with an AGP system running at 124MHz was simply too low to be considered strong enough for normal usage.  In any case, 112MHz yields a significant improvement for Super7 users as the speed of the L2 cache is directly proportional to the speed of the system's FSB frequency, and an improvement in the L2 cache speed is a direct improvement in overall system performance as has already been proven.  The 112MHz FSB setting is selectable from the motherboard itself, however in order to access the other settings (124MHz/133MHz) a quick trip to the Chipset Features Setup of the on-board Award BIOS is necessary . 

The performance of the motherboard, when outfitted with 1MB of L2 cache (allowing for a full 254MB cacheable memory area), is identical to that of the FIC PA-2013 featuring 2MB of L2 cache, and to top that, the Epox board has no problems running at 112MHz.  If you take the beauty of the FIC PA-2013, and add a much more simplified setup process, a more elegant layout and definitely more stable operation in both overclocked and normally clocked situations, you have Epox's new born motherboard, the MVP3G-M.

The Bad

It seems as if there will be no motherboard that will ever go without receiving a mention in "The Bad" section of an AnandTech review.  What's wrong with the MVP3G-M?  A number of things actually, however their significance is dependent entirely on the type of user you are. 

The obvious problem with the layout of the motherboard is that in order to make the memory banks easy to reach in a system, the CPU socket had to be bumped down, removing it from the path of airflow from the ATX power supply, and possibly introducing cooling problems when overclocking unless you have a well ventilated case. 

The stability of the Epox MVP3G-M is top notch for a Super7 motherboard, however in comparison to the cream of the crop of Intel BX motherboards, even the MVP3G-M has a little further to travel.  The board failed a total of 5 of the stability tests AnandTech conducted over a 24 hour period, a considerable amount in comparison to the average 1 or 2 failures found with most well designed BX motherboards.  Although the stability of the board isn't poor, it could be improved, and is probably a combination of influences from the chipset, video card, AGP bus, and the design of the motherboard itself as well.  Don't expect the MVP3G-M to be a crash-o'holic, however don't expect it to be a server mainboard either.  As a Super7 board, it's stability is top-notch, comparatively speaking.

The poorly written documentation packaged with the MVP3G-M is a tremendous discouragement and definitely of no use to first time builders, there are no suggestions or tips on how to get your system up and running right the first time in the manual, which is 75% standard BIOS documentation and 25% information about the motherboard.  Epox could have done much better with the documentation of the MVP3G-M. 

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

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

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 98 & 3D Winbench 98 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• Quake 2 tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color in Software Rendering Mode

The Final Decision

When it comes down to the current best overall ATX Super7 motherboard, even when placed up against the FIC PA-2013, the Epox MVP3G-M comes away with the lead.  Unfortunately it will take much more than what the MVP3G-M has to offer before AMD's K6-3 finds a partner that is truly a match made in heaven.  

How it Rates

The New Rating System
Each motherboard is rated in 8 areas, Performance, Price, Ease of Use, Overclocked Stability, Stability, Quality, Documentation, and Reliability.

Do not compare newer scores to older ones, the newer scores are much more aggressive

• Performance - How well the motherboard compares to others in its class

• Price - How competitive the price of the motherboard is when compared to others in its class

• Ease of Use - How easy it is to setup the motherboard, jumper settings, jumperless configuration etc...

• Overclocked Stability - How stable the motherboard is at overclocked CPU/Bus speeds

• Stability - How stable the motherboard is at normal CPU/Bus speeds

• Quality - How much effort went into producing the motherboard

• Documentation - How helpful is the manual and bundled support manuals

• Reliability - How long will this motherboard last, will it fail? Deals with quantity/size of capacitors, known bugs, etc...

• Overall Rating - an average of the eight above areas