FIC revamped the VA-503+ for the next revision of the board, 1.1B.  Adding support for two new Front Side Bus frequency settings, correcting the misprint in the user's manual, and making the VA-503+'s success synonymous with that of last year's PA-2007, FIC has refused to live with what they have and have made it clear that their goal is excellence.  While they say that the third time is a charm, let's see how well FIC can stray from the age old adage with their second shot at the perfect AT Super7 Motherboard. 

Anand Tech Report Card Rating
95/A

The Good

For those unfamiliar with the original VA-503+ design, the board is equipped with the increasingly popular yet cramped 3/3/1 Expansion Slot Configuration (PCI/ISA/AGP).  While this configuration saves space on the PCB itself this also limits you to 1 Full Length PCI slot and 1 Full Length ISA slot.  A Voodoo2 will fit in the last PCI slot, however chose any of the remaining 2 slots and you'll be quickly searching for a new 3D accelerator.  The 4 trademark FIC charcoal colored SIMM slots are bordered on their right by the 2 DIMM slots, on the top by the AT Power Supply Connector and Floppy Disk Connector, and on the left by the two EIDE channels.   The VA-503+ Revision 1.1B is all about new changes to an already outstanding product, this trend is mirrored in the MVP3 chipset that found its way on to the board which carried the Revision 'CE' label in its part number.   Revision 'CE' of the VIA MVP3 chipset eliminates the issues experienced between i740 accelerators and MVP3 based motherboards, so for those of you planning on using Intel's flagship graphics chipset you can easily make use of it on a board based on a product made by Intel's largest chipset competitor.  Expect all Revision 1.1B boards to ship with the 'CE' revision of the chipset.  When used in combination with the 1MB of L2 cache on the 503+ tested by AnandTech, the cacheable memory area of the MVP3 chipset was extended to include a full 256MB of RAM which should be more than enough for just about any user in the market for a Super7 board.

Improving on the original VA-503+'s outstanding support of FSB speeds and core voltages tailoring to the needs of the overclocker, FIC added two new FSB frequencies to their already lengthy list.   Alongside the 60, 66, 75, 83, 100, and 112MHz FSB settings FIC added the 95MHz and 124MHz frequencies to allow for much more than a superb experience with the VA-503+.   While stability becomes an apparent issue at the 124MHz FSB, as long as you have decent peripherals that can cope with the increased frequency you shouldn't have too many problems.  The support for the 95MHz FSB setting makes the new VA-503+ ready and willing to support the new AMD K6-2 333 which runs at 95MHz x 3.5.  While those shy of overclocking will want to run the 333MHz chips at the 95MHz FSB, running them at 336MHz (112 x 3.0) will yield a much greater overall performance than even the 350MHz setting due to the increase in FSB frequency.  The core voltages supported by the VA-503+ range from 2.0v to 3.3v in 0.1v increments with the 2.3v - 2.5v range being the sweet spot for overclocking the K6-2.  Remember that support for such a wide range of core voltages doesn't come in handy only to those that are overclocking, when running a chip at its rated speed you can always try decreasing the core voltage by 0.1v to try to decrease heat production.  Although it might not seem like much, it is something for nothing, and it's definitely worth a try if you're not going to be overclocking your chip. 

The VA-503+ User's Manual hasn't changed at all with Revision 1.1B of the board, the only difference between the manual packaged with the new 503+ and the older revision is the correct jumper layout diagram for the Clock Multiplier and SDRAM Speed jumpers.  The motherboard's bundle still includes the FIC CD-Pro disc which contains all of the necessary drivers and utilities such as the VIA Bus Mastering Drivers and the VIA AGP VxD's, definitely all that you would expect from a company like FIC.

When dealing with performance, the VA-503+ is the name to beat.  Benching in at the top of all charts, the VA-503+'s performance is top-notch and when coupled with the unofficial support for the 112MHz FSB (whose operation is beyond reliable) make this board as close to the board of your dreams as possible, for now at least...

The Bad

The Jumper Setup is still the VA-503+'s weak spot, however courtesy of the corrected and extremely detailed documentation that is provided with the board, the initial installation and configuration isn't too bad.  A second full length PCI slot would have been a definite plus, however it seems as if we're going to have to wait for the Tyan Super7 AT motherboard before that becomes a reality.

• Number of Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

BIOS Settings

Recommended SDRAM

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

Manufacturer: Advanced American Megatrends Technologies
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.megacom.com

Manufacturer: Azzo Computers
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.azzo.com

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

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

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 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

• After each motherboard was tested a complete format of the test hard drive was initiated and the OS/benchmarking software was re-installed afterwards a defragment was initiated using Windows 95's Disk Defragmentation Utility

• 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 800 x 600 x 16-bit color depth

The Final Decision

For an overclocker, the FIC VA-503+ Revision 1.1B is everything you could hope for.  As long as you don't wish to use more than one full length PCI card and more than 3 PCI cards total the new VA-503+ is probably the board for you.