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Today we'll be reviewing the latest in a long line of KT266A motherboards to move through the H.H. labs, the Acorp 7KT266A. Although some of you may not have heard of them, Acorp has been around for a number of years and remains one of Taiwan's top manufacturers of computer hardware components. The 7KT266A is one of the newest additions to a well established line of motherboards. With the praise that the KT266A has garnered over the past few months by reviewers and users around the world, it is no surprise that Acorp made it their chipset of choice for their new Athlon based motherboards. With a history of high-performance and stability, it must have been an easy decision. So let's get things started by taking a look at what the 7KT266A has to offer.
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| Specifications of the Acorp 7KT266A Motherboard |
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Not all motherboards are created equal... |
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CPU
AMD Socket A Athlon XP
Duron Processor
Chipset
VIA KT266A+8233
FSB
200/266 MHz
Form Factor
ATX
System Memory
DDR x 3
Audio
AC`97 Sound
AGP
AGP4X
IDE
Ultra DMA 66/100
Hardware Monitor
Built-in
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Expansion Slot
PCI x 5
ACR x 1
AGP x 1
Intelligent Wake Up
Wake on LAN
Wake on Modem
Wake on Alarm
I/O Support
USB x 6
Floppy x 1
Serial port x 2
Parallel port x 1
IR x1
Special Functions
Smart Panel II support
Over Clock
Over Voltage
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Below is a list of items that are included with 7KT266A motherboard: 1 - Drivers CD including Norton Anti- Virus 2001, Norton Ghost, AutoSave, eWalla, WinDVD, Acrobat Reader 4.05, Online Manual.
1 - Users Guide
1 - ATA 100 IDE cable
1 - Floppy cable
1 - Pocket calculator
1 - Fuzzy Sun Flower
| The first impression that we got with this package is we sure wish they would've saved the money spent on the calculator and Fuzzy Sun Flower and provided the user with more useful items. One of the biggest gripes we are constantly pointing out is that so many board manufacturers offer the ability to add additional USB ports to their product yet they don't provide the user with the hardware to take advantage of it. With the removal of gimmicks and the possible addition of a dollar or two to the overall cost of the board, Acorp could've included this hardware and they would win users over with their quality and useful extras all the same.
The Drivers CD had a clear and easy to use menu which displayed the entire contents of the disk. At first the CD appeared to have an excellent selection of useful products, however we did find a few problems, the first being that WinDVD was, in fact, not on the CD. We also found two other applications that would not function with our test system, AutoSave and Via Hardware Monitor which gave a message that it "can't be initialized by the BIOS." Aside from that, users should get good use out of the Norton products, I am particularly fond of Norton Ghost which has performed exceptionally well, especially with RAID-0 configurations.
Now that we've seen what comes with the 7KT266A, let's move on to the physical quality of the motherboard.
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Quality, Setup and the BIOS
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