New some background on the ASUS A7A266

[Xtasy]

My friend had a spare of these mobies lying around and is gonna give it to me ! I hope it is the A7A266 and not the A7A133, because he only knows that this mobie is ASUS and has the ali magik1 chipset. For those who own this mobo, can i ask you some few questions. Does this mobo have multiplier adjustments? How good are the overclocking options in general? How good is the cmedia audio? Does it support EAX like the cmedia chip on the IWILL Xp333? Also, is there a ratio for 100:133 cpu/mem? Thanks.

 

[AndyHui]

The A7A266 is significantly outperformed by its big brother the A7A266-E, which is based on the B0/c0 revision of the ALi Magik1 chipset.

Yes, this board has multiplier adjustments on PCB revisions 1.04 and up. The most common revision of the A7A266 is 1.03, however.

Overclocking options standard, FSBs up to 200, multiplier adjustments dependent on PCB revision. No VIO adjustments, but VDIMM and VCore adjustments are present.

The C-Media 8738 on this board is the older 4-channel version and is not nearly as good as the newer 6-channel 8738-DX which is used on most boards now.

Ratio adjustments for FSB:RAM exists as an option in the BIOS, but has not been implemented, so you can only select 1:1.

There's nothing really wrong with the board, and it IS reliable.

 

[Xtasy]

Ouch that is alot of differences.

 

[Xtasy]

ANd thanks Andy Hui for all the info. Much appreciated

 

[Xtasy]

OUCH!, the rev is 1.03 my friend told me. I really needed that multiplier bad too. Andy, is there a way for me to solder dip switches on for mult adjustments, because i read in the socketa.com review of this board that it provides the necessary traces for dip switches to be soldered on. ANy ideas? Thanks.

 

[AndyHui]

You don't have to.

All you need to do is solder a wire on the last pair of solder pads where the multiplier bank of dipswitches should be (connecting where switch 10 should be).

Once you have that, as long as you have an unlocked processor, you can use the multiplier adjustments in the BIOS.

 

[Xtasy]

Will that yield the same amount of multiplier settings as the dip switches? Is there a website that discusses this mod? Thanks.

 

[AndyHui]

Dan's Data: Hacking the A7A266

 

[Xtasy]

Andy,
my friend told me that the mobo has all dipswitches (up to 10) and no sound, but it rev 1.03. After reading from the arcticle u sent me, i noticed something:

...what's that you say? You've got an A7A266 with on-board sound, and it doesn't have a DIP switch 10?

Does this mean that the A7A266 w/ no on board sound do have all the dipswitches? Thanks for the help.

 

[Xtasy]

Also, does this mobo have any async fsb:mem settings, (ie. 100:133). Since i have a rev b t-bird, i would like to overclock it to 133 mhz fsb, and use crucial pc2100 at 166mhz. Thanks.