In the days of the Cyrix 6x86 finding a motherboard that would officially support the 75MHz bus speed required by the PR/200+ was almost impossible. It was during that time that DFI made their first lasting impressions on the ever expanding motherboard market, and as the old saying goes you only get one chance to make a first impression DFI used that one chance to their benefit.  Their VLSI Lynx based Socket-7 motherboard fully supported the 75MHz bus speed required by the Cyrix 6x86 PR/200+ and as a result of that it quickly became a very popular board among Cyrix owners, it soon moved to the top of the list as THE motherboard to have for the PR/200+.

After DFI's 15 minutes of fame things pretty much died down, they continued to manufacture motherboards however you didn't see them getting the publicity they used to.  Hardware Review sites failed to even remotely indicate their existence in the market...until now.  It seems like when armed with a great chipset DFI can do wonders, this time it isn't VLSI's Lynx chipset, rather the popular VIA VP3 chipset, VIA's only hope for the Socket-7 market at this point.  How well does the DFI P5XV3 measure up against FIC's Award Winning PA-2012?   How about EPoX's alternative P55-VP3 solution?  Here we see the fine line between performance and quality illustrated...so which facet is more important to you?

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Motherboard Specifications

 

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The Good

DFI's P5XV3 is much like a combination between the FIC PA-2012 and the EPoX P55-VP3, while that may be considered as being the "best of both worlds" that is not necessarily a good thing.  Taking a first look at the P5XV3 you begin to realize that the layout of the motherboard is based on a tiny variation of the ATX form factor, not a single inch of the P5XV3 can be considered as wasted space.   Very cost efficient on DFI's part, less wasted space translates into a lower end cost to the end user. 

Featuring 2 SIMM and 2 DIMM slots which cannot be populated simultaneously the P5XV3 doesn't skimp on expandability features, the 4 PCI, 3 ISA and 1 AGP slot cover all ends where most users are concerned, you can't really expect much more from a motherboard that has an AGP slot other than the 4/3/1 layout unless you aren't too big on ISA slots where you can grab something like the PA-2012 with only 2 ISA slots.

Setting up the P5XV3 for the first time is just as simple as starting up Windows, however as you know there are times when Windows can be a pain to start...the same thing goes for DFI's VP3 motherboard.  The P5XV3 must be configured using the standard sets of jumpers on board, however the manual packaged with the board pulls one of those all-in-one jumper setting deals where it doesn't tell you which jumpers control the bus speed and which control the CPU clock multiplier.  It takes a little bit of detective work to find out that the bus speed jumpers are JP1, JP2, and JP3...upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that the documented 50, 55, 60, and 66MHz settings aren't all that is possible with the P5XV3.  The only undocumented bus speed setting the P5XV3 provides you with the option of using is the 75MHz bus speed, it seems very unlikely that we'll see an 83.3MHz setting with any VP3 based motherboard.  The 75MHz bus speed can be attained by using the following jumper settings JP1: 1-2; JP2: 2-3; JP3: 1-2.

The VP3 chipset the P5XV3 holds close to its heart provides the user with the option of upgrading their video system to an AGP based Graphics Card instead of the standard PCI cards we have been limited to in the past.  Of course the 2 DIMM slots, courtesy once again of the VP3 chipset, can be filled using high performance SDRAM with which the P5XV3 didn't seem to have any problems, regardless of the brand of SDRAM that was tossed in the test system.   In theory the VP3 chipset can cache up to 1GB of system memory, however that feature of the P5XV3 is limited by a manufacturing oversight, this will be discussed in more depth in the Bad section of this review. 

The P5XV3, like most newer motherboards, features its own set of System Monitoring tools in addition to a Desktop Management Interface that records key information about your system's "health" or current status, monitoring components such as your processor, fans, etc...  Individual components can be monitored and those monitors can be configured using the comprehensive Award BIOS Setup Utility found in the P5XV3, the saying a motherboard is only as good as its BIOS Setup can be used here...since the DFI P5XV3 is one fine motherboard, with a great BIOS Setup to complement it.

DFI's user's manual contains 77 pages of just about everything you would possible want to know about your motherboard.  The simple line diagrams of the motherboard and the BIOS Setup Interface make installing and configuring your motherboard beyond easy, the only faults this manual has is the lack of in-depth information about your Clock Multiplier and Bus Speed jumpers as well as the common lack of an accurate description of the options in the Chipset Features Setup.  Other than that, the DFI P5XV3 walks hand in hand with the best of the best down the path of excellence with its user's manual following it not too far behind. 

Its quite obvious that DFI never intended the P5XV3 to be an overclocker's dream, they didn't include the 75MHz bus speed setting in the manual, nor did they print the setting on the motherboard itself.  At the 66MHz bus speed the P5XV3 is overall, the fastest VP3 based motherboard that has been reviewed on this page thus far.  Regardless of the SDRAM used, the P5XV3 allowed the test system to use the most aggressive memory timings without showing a sign of even beginning to struggle.  

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The Bad

Does this problem exist with the newer VP3 based motherboards?  Unfortunately...yes.  FIC's PA-2012 only makes use of one 32Kx8 TAG RAM chip like the EPoX P55-VP3, the difference between those two is that the PA-2012 uses 1MB of L2 cache, and it will cache 127MB of RAM, however the P55-VP3 from EPoX only has a maximum of 512KB of L2 cache...meaning its maximum cacheable memory area is fixed at 64MB.  Like those two specific cases, in the case of the DFI P5XV3, only one 32Kx8 TAG RAM is used so expect to only use a maximum memory size of 128MB with the P5XV3 if you don't want to take about a 5 - 15% performance hit.

The next major problem is the P5XV3's stability at the 75MHz bus speed...for the P5XV3 stability and the 75MHz bus speed are a contradiction in terms primarily because the P5XV3 isn't stable at all when using any bus speed greater than 66MHz (the only option above 66 being 75MHz).  As mentioned before, the P5XV3 was never intended to be an overclocker's dream...so all you overclockers can stay far away from this puppy, not like it'll cache all that much more memory than its TX competitors ;) 

 

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IRQ Usage

• Allows user to individually set IRQs for each Legacy ISA card

• Allows user to Assign IRQ for VGA

• Allows user to Assign IRQ for Modem

 

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BIOS Settings

 

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Recommended SDRAM

This little addition to my review layout was put in here just so you all can have an idea of what brand of SDRAM I recommend and have tested with the board, just to avoid problems in the future if you decide to purchase the board.

Recommended SDRAM: Advanced Megatrends SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 2 x 32MB Advanced Megatrends SDRAM DIMMs; 1 x 64MB Corsair SDRAM DIMMs

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

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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 97 / Business Graphics Winmark 97 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

• Business Winstone 98 / Business Graphics Winmark 98 was run on the Pentium MMX at 233MHz, and the AMD K6 at 233MHz, the averaging rules for these tests are the same as those used for the 97 test suites. 

• Business Winstone 98 was run on the Pentium II at 300MHz alone.

• 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 256 colors

Test Configuration

 

The scores of the Pentium MMX and the K6 at 225MHz aren't all that high due to the fact that the BIOS settings had to be considerably altered to get the system to perform in a stable manner at the 75MHz bus speed regardless of what type of SDRAM was used.  The lack of high quality capacitors could explain the reason the Pentium MMX at 262.5MHz consistently crashed during the Winstone/Winbench tests.

 

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The Final Decision

If you really want a VP3 based motherboard and don't plan to do much overclocking try and grab a P5XV3...but buyer beware, your cacheable memory size will be severely limited by DFI's choice to include a single Tag RAM instead of 2.  The smart thing to do would be to wait for the Aladdin V boards to hit the market...they should be doing so very soon...

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