VIA KT266A Motherboard Roundup - January 2002

Lab Notes

Over time we have seen tremendous improvements in motherboard development. Comparing the stability and compatibility issues of motherboards from just 5 years ago to those of today makes you truly realize how much this industry has matured in recent history; and we see that trend continue today in this roundup.

The most important aspect of any product you put in your PC is stability. We're glad to say that all the boards reviewed here were very stable in our stress tests, even with all the memory slots populated. In the past we noticed that motherboards from big manufacturers like ASUS and Gigabyte were generally the only stable solutions while boards from smaller names suffered; we are starting to see that trend disappear. This has a lot to do with the solid engineering job manufacturers put into designing the board and also the increased quality of components used. Manufacturers are a lot more selective of the parts they will use today and their equipment has improved as well.

We also noticed that features have now become a very important part of different motherboards. In the past, as long as a motherboard had memory slots and worked it was considered to be part of the norm. Today, manufacturers try to integrate as many features as possible such as RAID controllers, on-board audio and LAN, debugging devices, as well as overclocking features. Out of the boards we tested in this roundup, almost half of them contain some sort on on-board RAID controllers and all but two boards feature on-board audio (some of them even have 6 channel audio solutions).

Almost all boards in this roundup are rich in overclocking features as well. In the past, only a handful of boards would feature adjustable FSB speeds in 1MHz increments. In this roundup, all but two boards have that feature. Moreover, all the boards offer a decent range of selectable CPU core voltages and some of them even provide I/O or even DDR voltage manipulation for more flexible overclocking.

The icing on the proverbial cake comes in the manuals. While some boards still came with a thin booklet containing a little bit of information on jumpers and connectors, a lot of the boards actually came with very detailed manuals with all the details about the board. It's not a big deal but it's nice to see that all parts of the package are improving.