ASUS A7A266, any known problems?

[jema]

Got a great offer to buy the above mobo with CPU, RAM all in a good case. So Im wondering if there is anything one should look out for with this board. Never had a machine based on an Ali chipset so I dont know how well they work.

 

[AndyHui]

The original A7A266 (based on the ALi Magik1 chipset, A0 stepping), was a tad slow unless you were using the 133MHz FSB and PC2100 DDR SDRAM.

It is a very stable board, with a couple of minor quirks. You need to change the position of the jumper located on the end of the AGP Pro slot in order to use more than 2 DDR DIMMs; rev 1.03 and 1.04 of the board are missing the multiplier control dipswitches, and only rev 1.10 or above support AthlonXP processors.

Just make sure that you use the latest drivers, as the older AGP drivers had problems with ATi video cards.

The A7A266 was superceded by the A7A266-E, which is a much better board: significantly faster, multiplier dipswitches, support for the latest processors.

 

[jema]

Cheers!

Dont know what revision the board is but its running a 133FSB and Im going to run it as is, adding a GF card, so it sounds like I should be fine.

 

[mac123]

I added an extra stick of 256 MB DDR RAM onto my Asus A7A266 in addition to the 256 MB that I put in initially. I followed the advice posted earlier and changed the jumper near the AGP port. However, my system is prone to random reboots and my graphics card seems to stall during intensive gameplay. The specs on both types of RAM are the same, however, the first stick was made by micron and the second by PNY Tech.

Here are the specs to my system:
1.2 Ghz Athlon T-Bird
512 RAM DDR RAM, 266 Mhz...2 sticks of 256
64 MB Radeon 7600..?
40 gig, 7200 IBM HD
Win XP Pro

THanks!

 

[AndyHui]

Make sure that jumper is in position 2-3 (away from the AGP slot).

 

[DeeTees]

Beware PNY DDR ram. It may be very touchy. Stick to known good ram.