DDR For AMD: 16 Boards With VIA KT266

Asus A7V266: Ready For Palomino

A fast board from the current market leader: The Asus A7V266 runs with an FSB clock rate of 134.3 MHz, which both the BIOS and the user manual list as 133 MHz. The ACR slot is of no use to anyone.

Board revision: 1.05.

Shortly before the end of the test, we received the Asus A7V266 at our test lab. As usual, it always take a while longer for the market leader to start shipping the first of a new generation of boards. On the other hand, this also means that most faults have already been rectified from the outset. The advantages of the A7V266 are easily listed: It features a 6-channel PCI sound chip. The board is factory-shipped with one stereo output only. The layout of the board reveals that there is also an IDE-RAID version available (Promise Ultra 100 "Lite") with additional ports. The Asus A7V266 is one of the few boards that already supports the successor of the current AMD Athlon, namely the Palomino. Unnecessary: During the test, Asus proved to be not quite so accurate with the front-side bus. For example, although 133 MHz is shown in the BIOS, the real clock rate is 134.3 MHz. Accordingly, our test CPU (AMD Athlon 1200) ultimately ran at 1208.7 MHz. It is not possible to adjust the FSB to the specified 133 MHz. In the performance rating, Asus is at the top of the pack and ranks amongst the fastest boards for AMD Athlon/Duron.