Any info on the new ASUS A7A266

[NiceSocks]

I'm looking at buying an A7V133 asus board since its supposed to be THE best for AMD chips right now (im going to get a 850mhz duron), but I just noticed the new A7A266 for 20 (CDN) bucks more.

It supports DDR ram and also PC133 SDRAM.

Is this board going to perform as good or better than the a7v133? and is ddr ram any good? it runs at 266mhz opposed to 133 so it must be better..

the plan would be to buy this motherboard instead, put 256mb of pc133 ram in it for now and then get some ddr ram later, but then i'd probably have to junk the p133 ram? if so i'd just get 128megs of ddr ram instead and get a bit more when prices go down, thats if ddr ram is worth it at all. I know i noticed a huge difference between 66mhz and 100mhz ram when that came out so i'm hoping ddr ram is going to make the difference

 

[AndyHui]

It's a decent motherboard, but not spectacular in performance. Anandtech has a number of benchmarks which shows that unless you use a 266Mhz FSB AMD processor and PC2100 DDR SDRAM, performance will be not much better than the A7V133.

There is a new revision of the A7A266 (produced after April 17) that has the 5-10 block of dipswtiches for the multiplier. As long as you have BIOS version 1004 or later, you can take advantage of either the dipswitches or JumperFree mode.

If you are not lucky enough to have one of these new revision boards, there is a VERY SIMPLE mod that will allow you to make multiplier adjustments on the A7A266:

Picture of A7A266 wire mod
AMDMB Thread.

I have the older revision of the board without the multiplier dips, so I put this in the gf's computer. No problems at all, using SDRAM, and no messing around with 4-in-1s. Perfectly fine with the stuff from the ALi website.

For me, while it wasn't a spectacular experience like the CUSL2, it is definitely a decent board that I have no problems with. Even the onboard audio works (if a bit lacking in quality).

 

[Rong]

I just got a ASUS A7A266.
But I had tried to take Duron 700 or 1.33Ghz AMD together with SDRAM or DDR.
The MoBo just won't boot.
It stoped after memory test and devices detect.
I don't know why? I tried very hard to check every possibility.
All in vain.
Even most of the , no way to change anything in BIOS.
That means,once into BIOS. Then Stocked(dead).
Any body can help?
Regards.

 

[AndyHui]

Try resetting the BIOS to default values.

 

[NiceSocks]

Just dont use both ram at once, you can only have one or the other. I think i'll go with the a7m133 since it can take pc100 ram which lets me use my old ram from this computer, then maybe get 256megs of pc133 since its so cheap a bit later

 

[Rong]

Thank You AndyHui.
I will try it.
Regards.

 

[Rong]

Thank you AndyHui again.
It's back to work.
Reagrds.

 

[AndyHui]

 

[Trails]

I have the A7A266 with PC2100 DDR. It performs very well, although I haven't done any benchmarking. Would have prefered the AMD 760 to the ALi MAGiK1. However, Asus claims they're supporting too many chipsets, and decided to chop the A7M. Sounds fishy to me, but whatever. Anyway, the whole thing runs nicely.

 

[gizbug]

Where did you hear that ASUS chopped the A7M?

 

[chainbolt]

The rumor, that Asus would stop the A7M266 is around since February, just a month or so after the board came out. I have never seen any statement from Asus confirming this. And given the fact that the AMD 760 chipset is so well performing, why should they do this?