Super7 Motherboard Comparison

You must keep in mind that the intended goal of the Super7 platform was to combat Intel on the low end, with the "low end" in this case being the Intel Celeron Processor.   Because of this fact, many motherboard manufacturers saw no need for a "super" Super7 motherboard to be produced, eliminating many desires to produce a motherboard with a spacious layout.  Which is why, you will notice a considerable amount of cramped Baby-AT Super7 motherboards, and boards with 3 or 4 PCI slots in order to conserve space on the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and in turn driving the cost down even lower.  This seems to be overly present in the MVP3 motherboard market, with the majority of Aladdin V motherboards available in ATX form factor models.  The Socket-7 AGP market, doesn't really have this problem as Socket-7 AGP motherboards based on the VIA VP3 chipset for example, were intended to be fierce competitors of the Pentium MMX/Pentium II before the time of the Celeron. 

The ability of the MVP3 chipset to run the SDRAM Clock at the speed of the AGP Clock, although a very useful feature, adds to the complexity of the jumper setup and configuration on MVP3 based motherboards.  Aladdin V based boards don't seem to have the problem of a complex jumper setup since they are essentially Socket-7 AGP boards with a stable 100MHz FSB setting.  If jumpers are as intimidating to you as they were when I first started building systems you may want to consider a board that uses Dip Switches or one that has a fairly easy to follow User's Manual/Jumper Configuration. 

In order to make room for more Memory Expansion slots some manufacturers gave up the excellent placement of the CPU Socket on their ATX boards, shifting the socket to the south by a few inches - resulting in a potential cooling problem for overclocked processors.

Make sure that the Socket-7 board you are looking at has enough expansion slots to accommodate your needs.  The growing problem of running out of PCI slots is even more present in the Super7 world, as the boards get smaller and smaller in order to save cost, the number of expansion slots also decreases.  Another issue that hasn't been much of a problem until now is the fact that manufacturers are placing the CPU Socket (on AT motherboards) in the way of the PCI slots, therefore preventing full length PCI cards (such as Voodoo² boards) from populating those slots.  In order for the K6-2 to truly be a threat to the Pentium II, although officially considered a "Celeron-killer" it requires the presence of a Voodoo2 board and benefits greatly by the presence of two such cards running in Scan Line Interleave mode for a performance boost.  If your motherboard doesn't have room for a full length card, you can pretty much forget about playing games on your new system, unless you plan on shelling out the heavy cash for a single board SLI AGP Voodoo2, in which case you're better off going for a new case/ATX Super7 board combo. 

One positive point about the layout issue with newer Socket-7 AGP/Super7 motherboards is that unlike their Slot-based competitors, they don't require all that much space inside of the case due to the fairly square design of the CPU Socket vs the long Single Edge Connector (SEC) on Slot-1 motherboards.  Are we beginning to regret the move to Slot-1?  Maybe...maybe not...

Other Unique Features

With BX motherboards there were considerable amounts of unique features present on motherboards, while you won't see any SB-Link ports on Socket-7 AGP/Super7 motherboards there are still a number of other features you will want to look for once you narrow your choices down to a select few motherboards. 

After eliminating the layout factors you may want to look for things such as single jumper configurations for either  the clock speed or the core voltage or both.  Some motherboards offer keyboard power-on functions which allow you to take full advantage of the ATX power supply by turning on your computer using a quick combination of keystrokes. 

The presence of "in-between" voltage steppings such as those between 2.2v and 2.5v and those between 2.8v and 3.5v are also features you may want to look for as they can help increase stability when overclocking voltage-sensitive processors such as the K6-2 and even the Pentium MMX and original K6 for that matter. 

Drivers packaged with the motherboard itself will help save you a few minutes of net-surfing to download the latest Bus Master and AGP VxD's, and naturally nothing can be of more help that a well written User's Manual and any other written documentation that may be provided by the manufacturer.