Socket-A AMD 760 Motherboard Roundup: Farewell to a Beauty
by Mike Andrawes on November 3, 2001 4:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ASUS A7M266
|
ASUS A7M266 |
|
|
CPU
Interface
|
Socket-462
|
|
Chipset
|
AMD
761 North Bridge
VIA 686B South Bridge |
|
Form
Factor
|
ATX
|
|
Bus
Speeds
|
90 / 95 / 100 - 180MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
|
Core
Voltages Supported
|
1.075 - 1.850 V (in 0.025V increments) |
|
I/O
Voltages Supported
|
N/A
|
|
DIMM
Voltages Supported
|
N/A
|
|
Memory
Slots
|
2
184-pin DDR DIMM Slots
|
|
Expansion
Slots
|
1
AGP Pro Slot |
|
On-board
Audio
|
C-Media
CMI 8738 Hardware Sound
|
|
BIOS
|
Award
Medallion BIOS 6.00
|
ASUS was among the first to have a 760 motherboard ready for the market. The A7M266 was available for quite awhile before ASUS stopped production in favor of the A7A266 (Ali MAGiK 1) and because AMD was cutting the supply of the 760 chipset. This halt in production was only transient as ASUS quickly realized that the ALi MAGiK1 was not going to be a popular option.
In general we usually find that ASUS motherboards are among the best, delivering high quality construction and a myriad of overclocking features. Unfortunately, with the A7M266, ASUS has not been able to live up to their own high standards.
There is silkscreen for a third DIMM slot, although ASUS never made it available.
The board does offer quite a few overclocking features, such as 1MHz increments for the FSB and various voltage tweaks. The board is also very stable and of the usual high quality we've come to expect from ASUS. However, they failed to implement one key overclocking feature - CPU clock multiplier controls - greatly limiting the overclocking capabilities of the board. ASUS had in fact designed the A7M266 to support multiplier adjustments via DIP switches, but the feature was removed from all retail boards. The lack of an onboard IDE RAID controller seems minor in comparison to the lack of multiplier controls.
Making matters even worse, the A7M266 has some issues with memory compatibility as well. Our Smart Technology PC2100 DDR SDRAM would not run on the board stably at all, despite the fact that it worked on all the other boards in this roundup.
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