Asus Motherboards

[14k]

After numerous hours of research, i'm still unclear on a few things.

What is the difference between the A7A266 and the A7V266? From what I understand the A7V266 is not yet out yet, but the A7A266 is?

These two boards in addition to the A7M266 are DDR boards, but the A7V266 and A7A266 support SDRAM aswell as DDR ram? Would you be able to have SDRAM AND DDR ram running at the same time?

If I didn't have any old SDRAM and I was going to buy DDR ram now anyway would it be worthwhile getting the A7V266 or A7A266 boards? Would it be better to wait untill the A7V266 comes out? why?

Or would it be better to just get the A7M266 now, because I would use DDR ram straight away anyway.

Thanks.

 

[esung]

A7A266 is using ALI's chipset, A7V266 will be using VIA's
I'm not sure if one or both will be in production, and I have no idea of the actual spec whether they'll have SDRAM support or not. But You can not run boht SDR SDRAM and DDR SDRAM at the same time, that's for sure.

 

[14k]

the ali magik chipset, the amd 760 chipset?!

how do you know which chipset u want? two different chipsets for two asus ddr motherboards! A7M266 and A7A266. And whats the deal with the A7V266?

 

[pcmodem]

The benchmarks for the ASUS's DDR boards, the AMD760 based motherboards outperform the ALI Magik based MB's. The Via KT266 based motherboards I have heard will not ship until May. If you can wait, I'd wait until May to see how the Via KT266 motherboards perform; hunch is they'll outperform the AMD760s. As all of these motherboard chipsets are new, none are likely to be as stable as a mature motherboard chipset that's been out for 6 months to a year.

You don't want to mix RAM, it's suicidal. For these boards, go with 256 MB of reputable DDR RAM. PC2100, or you won't get the 266 Mhz FSB.
-pcmodem

 

[TP]

SO, what boards are people currently using then who want to use DDR ram? I thought this V266 was already out. I found some info on the MSI k7 Master(6341) being a DDR board yesterday, but couldnt find any reviews on it.

 

[14k]

i'm looking to get this system in early April, would it be best to get the A7M266 since it uses the amd760 chipset which is a good performer... better than the A7A266's chipset anyway, plus the A7V266 won't be out for a while. Anymore suggstions
TP: I think you're confusing the A7V266 with the A7A266 - the A7A266 is out, the A7V266 is not.

 

[rominl]

a7m266 - amd 760
a7a266 - ali magik
a7v266 - via kt266

a7m266 was released a while ago, but asus recalled them (due to whatever unknown reason), and probably asus will push the a7a266 into the market soon. a7v266 wouldn't be out till laster this quarter, since via has no intention to releaed the kt266 chipset anyway.

comparing the a7m266 to a7a266, the a7m266 should be much better since the 760 chip has a much better performance. and in fact, the ali magik chipset performs only a bit better than kt133a.

the reason why a7m266 doesn't have any sdram slot is because the amd 760 chipset doesnt not support sdram anymore, but both the ali and via chipset support ddr and sdram

 

[DuhOh]

OK, The situation is this:

Boards with ALI Magic chipsets are starting to appear in the market place. A few are available in Japan and the US. Limited supplies of Asus A7A266 are available. Early reports suggest they are not particularly fast, but I suspect the manufacturers will try to push them hard because thay are cheap to make and have PC100/PC133 and DDR support making them marketable as an upgrade path. Personally, I'd wait until they are reviewed by people such as Tom Pabst and Anand. Unless they are faster than KT133A chipsets, I don't see the point of getting one.

VIA KT266 chipsets have been supplied from VIA to mobo manufacturers for about 6 to 8 weeks, and releases from Abit, Epox and Asus are expected within the next 3 to 4 weeks, probable after Cbit in Hannover, and assuming no late problems arise. I have read a digest from a review in Hong Kong that showed a KT266 board was marginally slower than one with ALI chips. I couldn't find out which boards they were refering to, or much else about the tests so a am very dubious. However, if this turns out to be true I am not sure these boards are going to sell well. I do not know (information please!!??) if the chipset is really a KT133A chipset which has been modified to accept DDR ram or if it's a completely new solution. If it is only a mod of previous chipsets, this might explain the rumour of less than sparkling perfomance when compared to existing chipsets.

AMD 760 chipset boards. It depends on who you talk to. The only board available is from Gigabyte.

Asus A7M266 boards (with AMD 760 chipsets) do appear on some suppliers list, but it's doubtful whether you can actually get one delivered. According to reviews, this product is brilliant, but often the reviewers were given early versions, and retail ones seem to have many of the features disabled. However when they work, they are superb; but a lot of people appear to have all kinds of problems with them such as slow USB performance, sound card conflicts, PCI slot 4/5 errors and occaisonal slow AGP transfer rates. ABIT are rumoured to be releasing their KG7 mobo but they have had a dispute with AMD and may have technical problems: they have tried to release the product at least 3 times (to my knowlege) and each time have had to delay the release. There are rumours that AMD tries to stop the manufactures from making overclocking easy (with manual clock multipplyers etc.) for obvious reasons.

I am looking for an AMD 760 chipset board from a reputable manfacturer. I hope the ABIT KG7 RAID will arrive soon (if ever?) and not have many problems. I was originally going for the Asus A7M266. But when It was released without all the overclocking gizmo's, and then the guys at Athlonmb.com started having real attitude trouble with Asus, I decided to wait.

 

[14k]

Thanks for all the info.

So i suppose at the moment it's looking like the A7M266 - although i'll hold on for a bit too. I've got to get something by mid-april though.

I saw one review for the A7A266 at amd3d.com and it was highly recommended?

 

[DuhOh]

OK. I've read the article too. Other than the Quake III scores at 1024x768 and above, there is little here that is significantly faster than a board with a KT133A chipset.

The only possible thought for optimism is that the board should show better results with PC2100 ram, but at what cost?

Yes I'll grant you, on the basis of this review, the product looks OK. But I really do not think that the outlay, justifies the return. You are, of course, quite entitled to disagree.

If you look at the Asus forum at athlonmb.com, there are the first showing from the lucky (unlucky?) few who have received A7A266's. Opinion is devided. You also have to consider that Asus are currently something of a Bete Noir within this forum.

 

[rominl]

well, the north bridge of the KT266 is 8366, whereas for KT133A is 8363A. and if you look at the south bridge, KT266 uses 8233 and KT133A uses 686B. If you read the reviews on AnandTech, that means the KT266 is a total new chipset, not just the KT133A with some modification. It cna't be, coz' with the 8233 SB, the whole chipset architecture has changed. And it's really surprising that the KT266 performs so badly. Do you have the link to that review you read DuhOh? I can read chinese no problem

And if I am right, no matter what you do, get PC2100. PC1600 wouldn't be that much better performance than PC133, read the reviews on AnandTech.

14k, I haven't been to HK for a while, so I don't know what's available now. But you should start looking and see if the A7M266 is out. However, let me tell you one thing for sure, the board DOES NOT have any multiplier setting, so you can never modify the multiplier unless you do some soldering on the board, which I don't suggest.

And boards using the ali chipset? hmm....

 

[DuhOh]

No sorry, I do not have the link. I have a suspicion I took it from the Register, so if I have time, I'll check back: no promises. The review was a digest, and posted in English, so I'm not sure if there will be a link to the original Chinese. There ought to be but......

 

[rosarian007]

I don't understand why these new DDR boards only have 2 DIMM slots when most of them support more than 2gigs of ram. URRRGGG!!

 

[DuhOh]

I think it's because the chipsets will only support greater than 500 megs if the modules are ECC. When first envisaged most DIMMs were 256 megs or smaller, thus you only need two slots for most home users. It keeps the cost of the board down. I also gather that there have been some problems with beta boards when configurations with three or more modules were tried (although this is mostly rumour).

Where you need more (say, for a server) you would probably be waiting for the 760MP chipset, which I believe supports more DIMM slots, and more ram overall.

 

[Ikkitousen]

What about this one - THe ASUS CUV266?
It's a VIA Apollo Pro266 chipset. DDR2100 three DIMM slots and PIII support. I know it's a Pentium based solution but they its an ASUS board, and you cant go wrong w/ that. I was thinking of doing this board myself, jsut cause I've been burned by the earlier AMD chips, and they have left a bad taste in my mouth.

http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/newsarchives/2886/1/
this was posted on 3/18/01.

I need this board!!!

 

[rominl]

well, i think one of the issue with more than 2 ddr dimms on the board is signaling. as you have more and more dimms, timing is getting more and more critical. look at the i815 chipset. when you have more than 4 banks running at 133, it just can't handle it, why? that's coz' intel can get around the timing. same with ddr boards. remember, ddr is either running at 200mhz or 266mhz, that's very fast, it's not easy sometimes to have more than 2 dimms.

 

[DuhOh]

Yep! My understanding is the same as RONIML. I'd be interested to know if anyone gets the CUV266 to run well with all three sockets full. There is always an exception to the rule to be found.

Anyway, unless you are running a server, why would anyone want more than 1/2 a gig of ram? I know it's cheap, but does the extra cost (above 256 megs) justify the performance against the cost? I doubt it.

 

[14k]

rominl: I think the A7M266 is out here, it's listed on that goldenhk.com site anyway. I'm not looking to do any overclocking, soldering, etc..! so maybe this is the board for me. - unless there is something else on the horizon.

 

[rominl]

good, i think it's a good board, you can't go wrong with ASUS i guess. if you don't overclock, that should be the board i'd say