Epox MVP3G-M ATX Super7

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