Does the A7V266 support Barton CPUs?

[Arcum2]

Hello, I was wondering if the Asus A7V266 motherboard will support a Barton CPU. If not, then what is the highest CPU it will support.

Also, If I get a Barton CPU, should I go for the KT400 Chipset or KT333?

 

[mechBgon]

There are several revisions of the A7V266.

[*]All revisions support up to a 1400MHz Thunderbird Athlon or 900MHz Duron.
[*]Boards with a rev. 1.05 PCB will support AthlonXP's of either the Thoroughbred or Palomino core, up to a 2200+, using a BIOS revision that supports these CPUs (1010)
[*]Boards with a rev. 1.07 PCB will also support the 2400+ and the version of 2600+ that uses a 266MHz bus speed, using BIOS revision 1011
[*]None of the revisions support the Bartons, which all use 333MHz bus speeds so far

For a board that supports the Bartons, an A7V8X-X is one solution, and the A7N8X or A7N8X-Deluxe are a couple more. KT400A boards or nForce2 boards will work with all current Bartons, which are using the 333MHz bus speed.

More Bartons are on the way that will use a 400MHz bus speed, and for those, you'd want KT600 (not out quite yet) or nForce2. There's some ambiguity about nForce2's support of the 400MHz Bartons, because nVidia says that today's SPP nForce2 boards support them already. But nVidia is releasing a new stepping or variant of their chipset which will do it better, evidently. 😕

 

[Arcum2]

Ok, thanks for the reply 🙂