Better: The Asus A7N266-VM or the ECS K7S5A Pro?

[bupkus]

Better: The Asus A7N266-VM or the ECS K7S5A Pro?

I have the ECS still new in the box I might be able to trade for a used Asus.

 

[TerryMathews]

Asus, as I understand it, has more onboard features including DD5.1 audio out. Clocks up very well, but not up to nForce2 standards.

It will be faster than your ECS. Dunno if that's what's important to you or not.

 

[mechBgon]

The K7S5A Pro has USB 2.0 and higher memory performance. If they carried over the onboard audio that came with my revision-1 K7S5A, then it's at the opposite end of the spectrum from the A7N266-VM's nVidia Soundstorm-certified 5.1 digital + analog audio, however.

The A7N266-VM has onboard GeForce2MX-level video, not suitable for advanced 3D gaming but good for general use (a bit fuzzy at high resolutions though).

The A7N266-VM is a very reliable board, we now have about 25 of them at work, and there seem to be very few Forum users having problems with them.

 

[TerryMathews]

Can the K7S5A Pro hit 175MHz FSB? Cuz my A7N266-VM is sitting on it right now. Gives me pretty good memory performance, about 2400MB/sec.

 

[mechBgon]

What BIOS revision is your A7N266-VM? :Q Mine has no OC options at all, although there's a modification that some people do to enable OC'ing.

 

[TerryMathews]

You have to do the mod.

 

[mdcrab]

What about the Shuttle AK32A? It take either SDRAM or DDR, similar to ECS K7S5A Pro.

mdcrab

 

[bupkus]

Can either of these boards unlock the cpu multiplier?