ASUS CUV266 Socket-370 Apollo Pro 266 ATX

AnandTech Motherboard Rating

Performance

ASUS has always placed a focus on performance, and we can see that the CUV266 performs slightly faster than the Gigabyte GA-6RX 

Price

Not only with the CUV266, but price in general hurts boards with the Apollo Pro 266.  Although the CUV266 is not on the market yet, don’t expect to see it for much less than $200. The bundled DDR SDRAM does soften the blow a bit, but it is still pretty high.

Stability

Thanks to careful design and layout of the board, the CUV266 is extremely stable with no crashes in 24 hours of stress testing. if we enabled memory interleaving the system crashed only two times in 24 hours, better than most motherboards we have tested. 

Quality

ASUS has always used the highest quality parts on their products, and we continue to see that trend on the CUV266.  All components are top notch.

Features

The plethora of overclocking features is one of the most attractive selling points for the CUV266.  The addition of optional on-board Ethernet is just icing on the cake, especially for OEMs. We’d still like to see on-board IDE RAID offered as well, however.

Layout

The CUV266 has one of the most unique layouts we have ever seen, and the result is better performance and stability.  The only complaint would be the wasted PCB space on the right side of the board - removing it could help reduce the manufacturing costs.

Availability

You shouldn’t have to worry too much about finding ASUS products, either online or locally. 

Documentation & Software Bundle

We have always been very satisfied by ASUS’s manuals.  Even though ASUS didn’t include the manual with this early sample of CUV266, our experience has been that their manuals are very informative, including almost every detail you will need for your motherboard.  Their CD contains all the drivers and utilities as well, so you should have no problem setting the system up.