I am running a a7m266 right now, using the athlon 1.333mhz with 2x256 pc2100 micron ddr and love it, have not had 1 problem since i got it 3 months ago and i have never turned it off 
I've had an A7M266 since March and I like it quite a bit. Once I got a few hardware kinks worked out, it has performed like a champ and is quite fast.
Hardware snafu #1 - Avoid the Netgear FA-311 and FA-312 network cards with this board. This actually is starting to appear to be an issue with all AMD 760 boards as people such as HardOCP and forum readers over at AMDMB.com have reported the problem on Epox, Abit, Asus, and MSI 760 based boards. What happens is that the NIC seems to interfere with soft reboots. If you try to reboot from Windows, DOS, or from the BIOS setup utility, the system will hang. It can be reset with the button on the front of the computer, but that's not the preferred way of doing it. Switching PCI slots doesn't fix the problem either and there haven't been any BIOS fixes that I've heard of. Using a 3Com, Dlink, Linksys, or even a Netgear FA-310 NIC avoids the problem.
Point #2- Though many people can use SBLive! cards with this board without issue (or fixed any problems with BIOS and driver updates), I ran into some hard drive corruption problems with a SBlive Platinum 5.1 that weren't fixed by any of the patches (or changing PCI slots). All of the issues went away when I switched to a Philips Acoustic Edge soundcard. My recommendation to people buying this board, that don't already have a soundcard, is to use the onboard sound (which ain't bad at all) or go with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or Philips Acoustic Edge sound card. I owned Creative Labs soundcards for over ten years, but after two weeks of trouble shooting hell (before buying the Philips) I have a hard time recommending them for use with the Via686B southbridge. I know many people have used SBlive!s with this chipset without problem, but I feel like it is skating on thin ice. Just a recommendation, but one that comes from personal experience.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
Hardware snafu #1 - Avoid the Netgear FA-311 and FA-312 network cards with this board. This actually is starting to appear to be an issue with all AMD 760 boards as people such as HardOCP and forum readers over at AMDMB.com have reported the problem on Epox, Abit, Asus, and MSI 760 based boards. What happens is that the NIC seems to interfere with soft reboots. If you try to reboot from Windows, DOS, or from the BIOS setup utility, the system will hang. It can be reset with the button on the front of the computer, but that's not the preferred way of doing it. Switching PCI slots doesn't fix the problem either and there haven't been any BIOS fixes that I've heard of. Using a 3Com, Dlink, Linksys, or even a Netgear FA-310 NIC avoids the problem.
Point #2- Though many people can use SBLive! cards with this board without issue (or fixed any problems with BIOS and driver updates), I ran into some hard drive corruption problems with a SBlive Platinum 5.1 that weren't fixed by any of the patches (or changing PCI slots). All of the issues went away when I switched to a Philips Acoustic Edge soundcard. My recommendation to people buying this board, that don't already have a soundcard, is to use the onboard sound (which ain't bad at all) or go with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz or Philips Acoustic Edge sound card. I owned Creative Labs soundcards for over ten years, but after two weeks of trouble shooting hell (before buying the Philips) I have a hard time recommending them for use with the Via686B southbridge. I know many people have used SBlive!s with this chipset without problem, but I feel like it is skating on thin ice. Just a recommendation, but one that comes from personal experience.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
Forgot to answer one of your questions. I have used this board to play Unreal Tournament on line and it does great. One thing I ran into (and was very easy to fix) is that I had my NIC in PCI slot 5 which shares its IRQs with USB. Well... I had an MS optical mouse hooked up to run on USB and mouse control became jerky when doing online gaming. Obvious I suppose, that the NIC and the mouse were fighting for the same IRQ. I switched my mouse over to the PS2 port and online gaming is now flawless. That's a mistake that could be made with almost any motherboard and is easy to solve. Just thought I would throw it out there.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
A7M266
1333 MHz ATHLON 266 FSB
2 X 256 MB DDR SDRAM
WIN98SE/WIN2K
No problems (only built it 2 weeks ago). Best decision I made was to go with this board. It's fast!
1333 MHz ATHLON 266 FSB
2 X 256 MB DDR SDRAM
WIN98SE/WIN2K
No problems (only built it 2 weeks ago). Best decision I made was to go with this board. It's fast!
all sounds like good news to me! thanks for your replys, it looks like I'm gonna be going with this board and probably an athlon 1.2ghz. One thing though, about your networking thing. I have "Intel anypoint" wireless networking, which lets you network computers in the same househould through the phoneline (without interrupting phone conversation or dsl!). I haven't hooked it up to any computers yet, but you didn't mention intel in your list of "good" networking cards. do you know if that causes any problems?
My lan card is dlink, so that's good.
My lan card is dlink, so that's good.
Your networking hardware should be fine, intel networking is pretty good from what I've heard, but same as all companies it depends on if its high end or low end really.
I owned an Asus A7M266 motherboard about 5 days ago and it was a kick ass board for people who don't want to overclock. I had a 1.33 GHz Tbird and a geforce 3 and I played Half life based games, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Tribes, Tribes 2, Red Alert 2, Quake 1, Emperor: Battle For Dune, Duke Nukem, and a bunch of other games and it was rock stable. It was blazing fast too and very stable. The only problem I had with it was that it didn't want to overclock.
But I was in luck and my friend is VERY against overclocking and he bought my board and CPU so now I have an Epox 8K7A+ and a 1.4 Tbird overclocked to 1.6 GHz and its very stable.
But if I didn't want to overclock I would highly recomend the A7M266.
I owned an Asus A7M266 motherboard about 5 days ago and it was a kick ass board for people who don't want to overclock. I had a 1.33 GHz Tbird and a geforce 3 and I played Half life based games, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Tribes, Tribes 2, Red Alert 2, Quake 1, Emperor: Battle For Dune, Duke Nukem, and a bunch of other games and it was rock stable. It was blazing fast too and very stable. The only problem I had with it was that it didn't want to overclock.
But I was in luck and my friend is VERY against overclocking and he bought my board and CPU so now I have an Epox 8K7A+ and a 1.4 Tbird overclocked to 1.6 GHz and its very stable.
But if I didn't want to overclock I would highly recomend the A7M266.
I agree with the above comment regarding Intel networking. Intel tends to be good stuff and the only problems have been with the Netgear FA-311 and 312 NICS. It's something specific to their particular architecture that is problematic for the AMD 760 boards. I was just throwing out some NIC brands that I know work with the board, but don't look at it as an "approvial list". Virtually anything but those two cards should work.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. - Mark Twain
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