Asus A7M266 vs A7A266?

[seven11]

Other than the obvious chipset differences between the A7M and the A7A, what is the real difference, advantages or disadvantages between these two boards? I'm thinking of going with an A7M and I have heard that the 761 chipset is superior to the ALI MAGiK1 M1647 Chipset offered on the A7A. Any ideas?

 

[Oni]

it is far superior to the ali magik 1.
Everyone I know thats gotten an A7A266 has regretted their choice. I own an A7M266 and it kicks ass, mine just doesn't want to overclock.

 

[Guest]

The thing is

A7A266 doesnt use the Via 686b southbridge*that sucks*.

AMD user's always have the edge !

 

[OmegaX]

Did you mean that the Via 686b southbridge sucks or that it sucks that the A7A266 does not use the Via 686b? I personally prefer it to the AMD 766 Southbridge. And the ALI chipset just plainly sucks ass. I would pay the extra bucks to get the A7M266 for increased performace and stability...oh have I had my share of AMD computers that I built up for customers with stability problems.

 

[Guest]

I'm trying to decide that to. In my neck of the woods the a7m266 is about 25% more expensive, yet only gives a 5-10% increase in performance in most areas. I dunno, extra bucks for some bragging rights?


This parachute is guaranteed for the life of the user...

 

[andrewbadlose]

I dont think it is such a good idea to get the asus a7a266 because of the ali chipset. Looks like a great sdram board but with ddr ram it lookes like no performance gain or very minimal difrence from sdram.

<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q2/010509/alimagik1-02.html" target="_new">Here is a review on it right before it was released. </A>

 

[Crashman]

Well, now that the trolls have spoken their crud, let's put it this way-the "far superior" performance of the AMD761/VIA686b combination is about 2-3%. Big deal. Now for the kicker-almost everyone in here who owns the A7A266 has been completely happy with it. There are at least 15 yehs to three or four nays. And not one mention of any PCI compatabilities, or any of the other minor problems VIA is so infamous for. I build systems for a living and would only use the ALi if a customer requested an Athlon system.
There have ben minor complaints of problems that have mostly boiled down to the a few assembly eror-one guy monted his board wrong and shorted it out, two guys used too small a power supply, one guy used an old version of the ALi AGP driver, and four or five guys did not follow the recommendation of upgrading the BIOS to version 1.004. None of these problems indicate a poor quality motherboard or chipset. So I recommend the A7A266 simply for the compatability, forget the 2-3% performance penalty (compared to the A7M266) that all these guys are whining about.

Video killed my Radio Card!

 

[lamer_gamer]

I absolutely agree with your statements. BTW- In reference to post just above yours, the link given seems to give a differing point of view from what the poster intended: <font color=blue>"When equipped with DDR SDRAM memory, the Asus A7A266 occupied the top rung in all benchmarks."</font color=blue>

My brain has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down