Chapter 2 - Hardware Design; Mainboard Layout - EPOX EP-MVP3G-M Manual

Hardware Design 2-1
Chapter 2
Hardware design

2-1 Mainboard Layout

This mainboard
is designed with VIA Apollo MVP3 AGP/PCIset chipset which is
developed by VIA Corporation to fully support Pentium Processor PCI/ISA system.
By providing a massive increase in the bandwidth available between the video card
and the processor (66MHz), the unique feature of AGP supported by VIA Apollo
MVP3 chipset improves the speed of rendering and texturing for 3D graphics.The
chipset also provides an integrated IDE controller with two high performance IDE
interfaces for up to four IDE devices (hard devices, CD-ROM device, etc). The
Winbond W83877TF Super I/O controller provides the standard PC I/O function:
one floppy interface, two 16 Byte FIFO serial ports and one EPP/ECP capable parallel
port. This mainboard layout is shown in the next page for user's reference. Care must
be taken when inserting memory modules, CPUs or even plugging PCI card into
associated slots to avoid damaging any circuits or sockets on board. A cooling fan is
strongly recommended when installing Pentium/Pentium MMX/K5/K6/6x86/6x86L/
6x86MX/C6 processor due to possible overheat.
This mainboard supports a minimum of 8MB and a maximum of 384MB of System
Memory while Onboard 1024KB cache to increase system performance.
This mainboard supports standard Fast Page, EDO (Extended Data Out or Hyper
This mainboard
Page Mode) or synchronous DRAM. provides two 168-pin DIMM
sites for memory expansion. The sockets support 1M x 64(8MB), 2M x 64(16MB), 4M
x 64(32MB), and 8M x 64(64MB) single-sided or double-sided memory modules. The
memory timing requires 70 ns Fast page devices or 60 ns EDO DRAM. (DRAM
Modules may be parity [x 36] or non-parity [x 32].
This mainboard supports two Onboard PCI IDE connectors, and automatically
detects IDE harddisk type by BIOS utility automatic.
This mainboard supports Award Plug & Play BIOS for the ISA and PCI cards. The
BIOS can be located in Flash EPROM which can replace BIOS code easily if
necessary.