ASUS K7V KX133 Slot-A ATX

AnandTech Motherboard Rating

Performance

The K7V was slightly faster than the competition in terms of performance which gives it a slightly above average performance rating.

Price

ASUS boards have always been priced more like AOpen's products in that they are usually more expensive than the average boards. You get what you pay for is the justification for that, and with the K7V you're definitely getting an incredible product.

Unfortunately the K7V's larger PCB and external hardware monitoring ASIC (in spite of the integrated hardware monitoring feature of the 686A South Bridge) don't help keep its price down at all.

Stability

The K7V was the most stable KX133 motherboard we have tested to date which gives it the highest stability rating we've given a KX133 board to date as well.

Quality

The name ASUS has always been associated with clearly superior quality not only in their selection of components, but in the quality of the finished product as well. The K7V follows closely in this age old ASUS tradition of quality above all.

Features

The ASUS K7V is very feature rich, from its overclocked FSB settings to its adjustable core voltages.

The board also benefits from the KX133 chipset which allows for its 133MHz memory bus operation.

Layout

Just like the AOpen AK72 the K7V's layout is far from ideal, there is entirely too much wasted PCB space. We would've appreciated something along the lines of the layout of EPoX's 7KXA or Tyan's S2380.

Availability

ASUS is normally pretty easy to find among online and even local vendors (although they are a little pricey to stock), and since we have just recently confirmed that ASUS will be actively promoting the board as a member of their Athlon line you shouldn't have any problem getting your hands on a board.

Documentation & Software Bundle

The K7V's user's manual was excellent and the bundled drivers included everything necessary for proper setup of the board.