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Lately, not a
day goes by without a reader inquiring about what
motherboard we'd buy if we planned on building an Athlon
system. This is a seemingly straightforward
question, but the Athlon motherboard market has seen such
a large influx of great products since the introductions
of VIA's
KT266A, that it is almost impossible to recommend one
board over another without asking a slew of qualifying
questions. Will you be overclocking? Do you
want RAID? What type of on-board features, if any,
are you looking for? Are you a gamer? Without
the answers to these questions (and many more), helping a
reader decide on a product is very difficult.
An equally
difficult task was deciding which KT266A based
motherboards we would test in this round-up. There
are some excellent boards out there from companies like
EPoX,
Shuttle and
ECS
(among others). For the sake if this article
however, we wanted all of the boards to have these
features... on-board RAID, a complete set of overclocking
features and at least one other "non-standard" feature
(like USB 2.0 or diagnostic tools). The four boards
that made it into this article are widely considered to be
in the "upper echelon".
Abit's
eagerly anticipated KR7A-RAID is here, along with the
excellent
Asus A7V266-E, the very cool
Soyo
K7-DRAGON+ and
MSI's well equipped K7T266 Pro 2RU. Now it's
time to dive in and see if these products deserve their
lofty positions in the minds of computer enthusiasts
everywhere...
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Specifications / Features of the
KT266A Combatants! |
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Fully Loaded... |
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Click any Image for an Enlarged view...
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ABIT
KR7A-RAID
DESCRIPTION:
-
200/266MHz Bus Speeds based on VIA KT266A Chipset
(8366A/8233)
-
Supports
Socket A AMD Athlon, Duron and XP Processors
-
DDR
SDRAM (Four 184-pin DDR SDRAM 2.5V DIMM sockets, up
to 4GB)
-
RAID
controller on board
EXPANSION
SLOTS:
EXTRAS:
-
On Board
Ultra I/O CHIP
-
Two
RS-232 Serial Ports (16550 UART compatible)
-
One
Parallel Printer Port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
-
One FDD
port (supports 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD)
-
Provides
IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver
-
Provides
6 USB ports (2 rear, 4 front)
-
Ultra
DMA IDE Ports
-
Four
independent channels for eight IDE devices (two for
RAID)
-
Supports
up to PIO mode 5 & UDMA 33/66/100/133
-
Two PCI
bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports
-
Boot-Block Flash BIOS
-
Award
PCI BIOS with ACPI function
-
2M byte
Flash ROM
-
Enhanced
PC Health Monitoring
-
On-board
voltage monitors for +3.3, +5V, +12V, Vcore,(TBD)
-
CPU fan
speed monitor (TBD)
-
CPU
temperature monitoring through flexible thermal
sensor (TBD)
ASUS
A7V266-E
DESCRIPTION:
-
200/266MHz Bus Speeds based on VIA KT266A Chipset
(8366A/8233)
-
Supports
Socket A AMD Athlon, Duron and XP Processors
-
DDR
SDRAM (Three 184-pin DDR SDRAM 2.5V DIMM sockets, up
to 3GB)
-
RAID
controller on board
EXPANSION
SLOTS:
EXTRAS:
-
On Board
Audio Subsystem
-
On Board
Ultra I/O CHIP
-
Two
RS-232 Serial Ports (16550 UART compatible)
-
One
Parallel Printer Port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
-
One FDD
port (supports 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD)
-
Provides
IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver
-
Provides
6 USB ports (2 rear, 4 front)
-
Ultra
DMA IDE Ports
-
Four
independent channels for eight IDE devices (two for
RAID)
-
Supports
up to PIO mode 5 & UDMA 33/66/100
-
Two PCI
bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports
-
Boot-Block Flash BIOS
-
Award
PCI BIOS with ACPI function
-
2M byte
Flash ROM
-
Enhanced
PC Health Monitoring
-
On-board
voltage monitors for +3.3, +5V, +12V, Vcore,(TBD)
-
CPU fan
speed monitor (TBD)
-
CPU
temperature monitoring through flexible thermal
sensor (TBD)
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SOYO
K7-DRAGON+
DESCRIPTION:
-
200/266MHz Bus Speeds based on VIA KT266A Chipset
(8366A/8233)
-
Supports
Socket A AMD Athlon, Duron and XP Processors
-
DDR
SDRAM (Three 184-pin DDR SDRAM 2.5V DIMM sockets, up
to 3GB)
-
RAID
controller on board
EXPANSION
SLOTS:
EXTRAS:
-
On Board
Audio Subsystem
-
On Board
Ultra I/O CHIP
-
Two
RS-232 Serial Ports (16550 UART compatible)
-
One
Parallel Printer Port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
-
One FDD
port (supports 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD)
-
Provides
IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver
-
Provides
6 USB ports (2 rear, 4 front)
-
Ultra
DMA IDE Ports
-
Four
independent channels for eight IDE devices (two for
RAID)
-
Supports
up to PIO mode 5 & UDMA 33/66/100
-
Two PCI
bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports
-
Boot-Block Flash BIOS
-
Award
PCI BIOS with ACPI function
-
2M byte
Flash ROM
-
Enhanced
PC Health Monitoring
-
On-board
voltage monitors for +3.3, +5V, +12V, Vcore,(TBD)
-
CPU fan
speed monitor (TBD)
-
CPU
temperature monitoring through flexible thermal
sensor (TBD)
MSI K7T266
Pro 2RU
DESCRIPTION:
-
200/266MHz Bus Speeds based on VIA KT266A Chipset
(8366A/8233)
-
Supports
Socket A AMD Athlon, Duron and XP Processors
-
DDR
SDRAM (Three 184-pin DDR SDRAM 2.5V DIMM sockets, up
to 3GB)
-
RAID
controller on board
EXPANSION
SLOTS:
EXTRAS:
-
On Board
Audio Subsystem
-
On Board
Ultra I/O CHIP
-
Two
RS-232 Serial Ports (16550 UART compatible)
-
One
Parallel Printer Port (SPP/EPP/ECP mode)
-
One FDD
port (supports 3 mode, 1.2/1.44/2.88 MB FDD)
-
Provides
IrDA port with optional cable for transceiver
-
Provides
8 USB ports (4 rear, 4 front) & USB 2.0
-
Ultra
DMA IDE Ports
-
Four
independent channels for eight IDE devices (two for
RAID)
-
Supports
up to PIO mode 5 & UDMA 33/66/100
-
Two PCI
bus mastering ATA E-IDE ports
-
Boot-Block Flash BIOS
-
Award
PCI BIOS with ACPI function
-
2M byte
Flash ROM
-
Enhanced
PC Health Monitoring
-
On-board
voltage monitors for +3.3, +5V, +12V, Vcore,(TBD)
-
CPU fan
speed monitor (TBD)
-
CPU
temperature monitoring through flexible thermal
sensor (TBD)
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Forgive us
if the above specifications look very similar, there
was quite a bit of information to fit in a relatively
small space. We highlighted the obvious features
of each board. The rest of their features will
be covered later.
THE
BUNDLES: |
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The Abit
KR7A-RAID has a fairly complete bundle, but was
missing some simple items like a secondary USB cable.
In the box we found three ATA133, 80-Wire IDE cables,
a floppy cable, a driver CD and floppy and a very
complete User's Manual. Full "retail" boards are
shipping with the USB hardware we desired. Even
though ours was missing, we won't hold anything
against Abit. They're doing the right thing by
end-users. |
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The
A7V266-E's bundle was "complete" but like the Abit
KR7A-RAID, there was nothing unusual in the box.
It's tough to see it in the picture, but there are
actually two 80-Wire IDE cables included, a standard
floppy cable, hardware to use the secondary USB
header, a very good User's Manual and a CD containing
all of the necessary drivers to get your board up and
running, plus some Antivirus software and proprietary
utilities. |
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There's
a different story to tell when it comes to the Soyo
K7-DRAGON +. Included with the board were three
80-Wire IDE cables, a standard floppy cable, an ATX
case plate, the extra audio plate necessary to utilize
the 6 Ch. audio and Digital-Out capabilities of the
on-board C-Media sound and a very good User's Manual.
There was also a driver CD and an "8-in-1" software CD
containing some excellent programs from Symantec, like
Norton Ghost and Antivirus. You can even get
this board with a Smart-Card reader and front
mountable USB connectors that will fit in any 3.5" or
5.25" drive bay. Our package did not come with
these extra items, but they are readily available. |
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MSI
included a ton of extras with the K7T266 Pro 2RU as
well. In the box we found only one 80-Wire IDE
cable, a standard floppy cable, a driver and utility
CD and two very complete manuals, one for the board
itself and the other detailing the intricacies of IDE
RAID. There were also two USB brackets included,
one with four (4) external connectors and one with two
external connectors plus diagnostic LEDs. If
you're counting, that's of six extra USB connectors,
plus the two already
mounted on the board, for a grand total of eight!
There is also an optional USB security device dubbed
"Smart Key" available, but it was not included with
our review sample. |
INSTALLATIONS:
Luckily,
there is not much to report with regards to installing
these boards. All four of them installed without
incident. Just keep in mind that there are a few
extra steps that need to be taken should you want to
install your operating system onto a RAID array.
You'll have to have a driver floppy and a quick finger
ready if you plan on installing Windows 2000 or XP.
We were able to install Windows XP on our first
attempt with all four boards without a problem.
Now, let's
get up close and personal and see what these puppies
are made of...
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