A Classic.

There has been a stigma associated with build-in video on motherboards ever since the (in)famous “Tomato Board” – for those who still remember this particular monstrosity of a brand, don’t raise your hand – It tells everyone here how long we’ve been hardware fans.

Well, since I’m the one on the hot seat (and the one who mentioned the Tomato Board) I guess it wouldn’t hurt anymore for me to expound on this board’s “features”. First of all, a first timer would have marveled at the number of components integrated into the Micro-ATX board. Prominent of course is the on-board … Via? Or was it an SiS? … video processor which was very capable of displaying Windows 98 Graphics. That wasn’t praise. Then there’s the modem add-on card, the sound add-on card, and a slew of other useful in & out connectors - the configuration depended on which particular tomato board it was.

                                  This wasn't included in any of theTomato series.

What set these boards apart was the fact that it advocated an “all-in-one” approach wherein the most used components (as well as some never-used components) were jammed onto a Micro-ATX form factor board on the premise of making assembly an easy process. Unfortunately, I remember this board most vividly for missing drivers and afternoons feverishly looking for a replacement driver online – which I inevitable found, and then just as inevitably always proved to be for another variant of tomato board. Another fond memory I have of this series is the tendency for its components to fail and worse, drag along the whole motherboard with it. I’m talking about a faulty modem causing the whole thing to refuse to boot up, and other similar cases. These instances of failure weren’t as rare as I would have liked them to be.

Fast forward to the present. I still have a vintage Tomato board that I am currently comparing side-by-side to an MSI G33M Micro-ATX motherboard. This modern board has a remarkable number of similarities to the old board, but thankfully avoids the half-baked implementation of features prevalent in the old tomato series. This product and its ilk will probably be the best cure to many a hardware guy’s reluctance to purchase and make use of a Micro-ATX board with built-in video.

                                  It being named "Tomato" reminds me of another fruit that's yellow...

The two boards are within an inch in width – although MSI’s G33 is noticeably bigger towards the memory slots. Where the Tomato had half-implemented additions to the main board in the form of add-on cards and immature technologies, the MSI G33 crams its features into where it will count most.

There is a total of 6 hard-wired USB 2.0 sockets at the rear panel, supplanting the parallel port of yore that should have died a natural death a long time ago. FireWire and External S-ATA connectors are some other new(er) connectors available from the rear panel. Even if new, these connections are mature, useful additions to any new self-built PC. The G33M, as well as most new boards sold today, include a modern discrete-video connector in the off-chance that the on-board video fails, or when the user wants to upgrade to better graphics. Coincidentally, one of the major faults of the Tomato series was to exclude exactly this feature – as an alternative when on-board video wasn’t enough anymore, or when it failed – which it did – numerous times.

                                     Not all iterations will have 5 SATA slots. Local versions have 3.

It’s also surprising to see four memory slots onboard – for dual memory purposes no doubt. Three SATA connectors, a 7.1 audio system, and support for new hardware similar to its larger ATX brethrens round out the package, and what a package it is, in such a compact and affordable sense. There is no included modem, whether in bracket or chip-integrated form, but I doubt it will be missed, just as the missing parallel and serial ports will not be mourned. There’s a Gigabit LAN connector thou. The one thing that’s left to get rid of is the 1.44 legacy connector for your floppy. I frankly don’t know why we still bother…

                                   Modern connectors abound, but where do we connect the LX300?

There shouldn’t be any worries on the efficacy of the on-board video this time around – Intel’s GMA X3100 video chipset is guaranteed to run the Vista Aero-Glass feature – in conjunction with other Vista capable components of course. The fact that this integrated video component can run the Vista graphical interface sounds impressive now, but remember, being able to run the Windows 98 interface was impressive news years ago too. Still, this is a G3M of a board. As we say here, such is progress.

Disclaimer:

> The Tomato series of motherboards made no great strides in design and reliability, but I believe that there is a number of people who had good results with these boards. To paraphrase a term, your mileage may have varied. Mine never wavered from "zero".

> The Epson LX 300 mentioned in the caption now comes in USB 2.0 - connector flavor - so no big loss.