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MSI K7T266 Pro 2 RU


Date
: 02/14/02 – 12:10:22 PM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: MSI
Price: $120

Introduction

A few months ago I reviewed the original K7T266 Pro, based on VIA's KT266 chipset. As you may recall, this board performed fairly well and offered a nice list of additional features, like the diagnostic LED's, extra USB ports, onboard RAID, onboard sound and some good overclocking options. Although this chipset offered a good performance/price ratio, AMD's very own chipset easily wiped it off the shelf with better benchmarks and overclocking results. The KT266 quietly disappeared from the stage and time went by … until a few months ago the successor of the KT266 was born: the KT266
A

The very first motherboard that made it to the market was EPoX 8KHA+, which is still a very solid and well performing motherboard, in case you were wondering! Following in EPoX's footsteps, other manufacturers released their KT266A boards to the public. Today I am reviewing one of those boards, with VIA's KT266A chipset acting as the main controller unit. MSI was so kind to send a K7T266 Pro2-RU to the official O² bunker so I could take this sweety for a spin in the fast lane.

If you thought the K7T266 Pro had many features, think again, because the new kid in town comes with several other gadgets like USB 2.0, Smart Key and more!! I bet this got you interested, so sit back and enjoy the review!

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

MSI really cramped this board with features, offering you one of the best equipped motherboards currently available. Let's take a closer look at this PCB …

CPU

Supports Socket A (Socket-462) for AMD® Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron processor
Supports 800MHz up to 1900+ MHz processor

Chipset

VIA® KT266A (552BGA) Chipset
- FSB @200/266MHz
- AGP 4X and PCI Advanced high performance memory controller

VIA® VT8233 (376BGA) Chipset
- High Bandwidth V-link Client controller
- Integrated Faster Ethernet LPC
- Integrated Hardware Sound Blaster/Direct Sound AC97 audio
- Ultra DMA 33/66/100 master mode PCI EIDE controller
- ACPI

FSB

100/133(200/266)MHz clocks are supported

Main Memory

Supports six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMM's
Supports a maximum memory size up to 3GB
Supports 2.5v DDR SDRAM DIMM

Slots

One AGP slot
- AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) specification compliant
- Supports AGP 2.0 1x/2x/4x
One CNR (Communication Network Riser) slot
Five 32-bit Master PCI Bus slots
Supports 3.3V/5V PCI bus Interface

On-Board IDE

An IDE controller on the VIA® VT8233 chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA 33/66/100 operation modes
Can connect up to 4 IDE devices
On-Board Peripherals
On-Board Peripherals include:
- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
- 2 serial ports (COMA + COMB)
- 1 parallel port supporting SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 1 IrDA connector for SIR/ASKIR/HPSIR
- 1 Audio/Game port
- 1 D-Bracket header

BIOS

The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically. The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications.

Dimensions

30.4 cm(L) x 23.5 cm(W) ATX Form Factor

Mounting

6 mounting holes

Special Functions

Promise 20265R On-Board
- Supports IDE RAID 0 or 1
-The two IDE RAID connectors support hard disk drives only
Note: Only two hard disk drives will adopt RAID function.

USB Interface
- K7T266 Pro2-RU: 4 USB 2.0 ports, 4 USB 1.1 ports

Special Features

Fuzzy Logic3
Live BIOS
Live Driver
D-Bracket (Optional)
Smart Key (Optional)

As you can see, MSI has not spared any money or R&D in order to present you a sweet motherboard.

The K7T266 Pro2-RU comes is available in several flavours: the full monty, one without USB 2.0 support, one without RAID, and so on and so forth. The one I am discussing here is the K7T266 Pro2-RU, which is the top-end version featuring every single option there is available.

Expansion will most certainly not be a problem with MSI's board; it has 5 PCI slots, 1 CNR slot, 1 AGP slot, 4 USB 1.1 ports and 4 USB 2.0 ports (USB 2.0 is around ten times faster than USB 1.1 we all use now, in theory at least)! Add to that the onboard Promise RAID controller which let's you connect an additional 4 IDE devices and you are all set.

According to my knowledge this is the ONLY motherboard that comes with 8(!!) onboard USB ports, with 4 of them being able to take USB 2.0 devices as well. 8 ports means you can connect a truckload of USB hardware to your rig … heck I bet you can borrow all your neighbour's USB hardware and still have a port free ;).

I slightly mentioned the onboard RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) feature in the above paragraph, but I didn't go into it in detail. MSI, as usual, uses the Promise 20265R controller, which unfortunately does
not
support RAID0+1 or RAID10. You can set up a RAID0 or a RAID1 configuration, but not a combination of both. You can however use the RAID controller as normal IDE ports, and hook up to devices per port. This makes a total of 8 IDE devices (4 on the RAID controller, 4 on the motherboard), which should fulfil your needs with plenty to spare. Note that you should only connect hard drives to the RAID controller because having cd-rom's and zip drives (and other hardware that is not a hard drive) plugged in there could cause crashing and instability. Personally I tend to like the High Point RAID controllers better, because they do offer RAID0+1 / RAID10 support. Maybe MSI will decide to turn the HP direction one day, only time will tell.

MSI has, just like most other KT266A boards out there, equipped the K7T266 Pro2 with a total of three memory slots, good for a total of 3GB DDR memory! Of course you can use both PC1600 and PC2100 sticks, but frankly I wouldn't spend any $$$ (Euro's for our European buddies ;)) on PC1600 because running your processor at 100MHz will definitely slow things down when compared to running it at 133MHz.

Something I have always loved about MSI motherboards is the D-LED feature: a series of 4 LED's gives you information on the status of your rig. No more guessing what's wrong, just look at the LED's and the gates to heaven will open up for you. The downside to the D-LED is that you have to open up your case to be able to see the LED's … well, no more! MSI is including a D-Bracket, which is also a 4 LED combination that sits on a metal plate that can be installed in a free card slot at the back of your case. From now on you can check those LED's as well to see what is wrong with the computer. Now if they would only find a way to fix the computer without opening up the case, everything would be perfect ;).

Smart Key is another new feature which I hope will be installed on future MSI motherboards. In short, the Smart Key is a USB key that needs to be plugged into a USB port before you can use your rig. If you unplug the key while being in Windows, the computer will go into "lock modus". If unplugged while the computer is shut down, you can NOT boot the computer without it!! If you loose the key, the only one to bail you out is MSI, so don't you go loose it mate! I pretty much enjoyed this gadget and I am sure many of you will: just think of the possibilities at home or at work.

Although the K7T266 Pro2-RU is loaded with stuff, the board is not out of proportion: 30.4cm x 23.5cm. Quite normal if you ask me. Note that you also get onboard sound, game port, and the usual onboard stuff, which is ok for the people who don't care much about quality. Those of you who want top notch, multi speaker, high quality sound rigs, go out and buy something more professional.

Page 3 : Layout

Layout

The layout of the K7T266 Pro2 is not bad, but there are some flaws in the design. The first one that caught my eye was the placement of the ATX power connector: it is sitting on the left side of the cpu socket resulting in an ATX power cable running over the processor. Putting the ATX connector on the top-right corner would have been much better in my opinion. The second point of criticism is related to the memory slots: my VisionTek GeForce3 test card was blocking two of three slots. This means you will have to remove your video card every time you want to add or remove memory. My last negative note is about the RAID connectors: they are placed at the bottom side, in a horizontal position. The good thing is that this way, IDE cables are going up flat against the motherboard, not restricting the airflow. The bad side? If you have your drives at the top of your case you will need very long IDE cables.

Now that I covered the bad points, I also shall share the good things. MSI did a fine job with the cpu socket: there is a lot of room around it, giving you enough clearance to install a large air cooled heatsink or a superb watercooler with some peltiers attached to it.

MSI's engineers installed the connectors for the onboard sound stuff at the bottom of the board, which I highly approve. No more tampering with cables between your add-on cards! Way to go MSI!

The placement of the fan headers was, again, very good. One header sits quietly at the bottom, ready to power a case fan. The remaining two fan headers are on each side of the memory slots. Maybe they should have both been on the left side of the memory slots, but all in all they are located pretty good.

Oh, did I mention the board has a very cool
RED
color? Very stylish!!

That takes care of the layout rant, on with the BIOS chat!

Page 4 : BIOS & Overclocking

BIOS & Overclocking

MSI is using the same BIOS they use on their other motherboards, meaning it comes with a lot of tweaking options, settings, readings, and just about everything you could ask for. The board is very overclockable as it offers multiplier adjustment, front side bus adjustments in 1MHz increments, the ability to up the processor core voltage up to 1.85v, and DDR voltage adjustments. The whole package. Of course memory settings are at your disposal too: CAS timings, RAS timings, interleaving, command rate, you name it, MSI let's you change it ;). One thing I noticed: I tend to change my cpu settings, press F10 and then press "Y" to exit and save the BIOS. This is not doable with this board. You have to return to the main menu before you can press F10. If you are used to the quick exit I just described, this will get on your nerves.

With two memory slots filled with Crucial memory, I was able to enter windows at 164MHz FSB. This is also the maximum FSB setting available. Quite nice heh? I did not use this setting to run benchmarks since we test all motherboards at 133MHz and 150MHz FSB in order to compare them with the competition. Just so you know that 164MHz is achievable with the correct memory installed.

All in all, I was pleased with the BIOS and the overclocking achievements of the K7T266 Pro2.

Page 5 : Benchmarking

Benchmarking

Time to take our baby for a spin and see how it holds up to the other boards out there. First, a quick look at what's under the hood.

- AMD TBird 1.4GHz
- MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU
- 256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR
- VisionTek GeForce 3
- Western Digital 20GB 7200rpm
- Accton NIC
- Windows 2000 Pro + SP2 + Detonator 23.11 + VIA 4.36a

Let the games begin …

Sisoft Sandra Memory Benchmark

Quake 3

Demo 001

Torture demo

MadOnion's 3D Mark 2001

16-BIT

32-BIT

The K7T266 Pro 2 is kicking some serieus butt on the benchmarks. The board is performing a tad faster than the EPoX 8KHA+, which is based upon the same chipset. Note that the difference is not big enough to be noticeable in real world usage, but still … if you want the fastest board, you only have one option. I also added some other boards based upon other chipsets and also using other processors to give you an idea on how other computers would perform in these tests. Always nice to know heh?

Page 6 : Conclusion

Conclusion

The K7T266 Pro 2 RU is a good, solid motherboard, offering good performance for a good price. It is loaded with features: 8 USB ports, USB 2.0, Smart Key, onboard stuff, D-LED, D-Bracket, onboard RAID, and if there is something missing on this board, please feel free to inform me what it is because I couldn't think of anything.

Overclocking was quite a trip with this MSI board, and we reached 164MHz without too many problems. Although 164MHz is good, being able to go up to 200MHz would be better. Some memory sticks can reach +180MHz (*hint* Crucial *hint*) and I would love to be able to get the most out of my memory. Also think of the upcoming 333MHz DDR memory sticks (running at 166MHz) and you know why I want +164MHz. I am pretty sure that MSI can fix this with a BIOS update, but then we might run into problems with the PCI clock.

Keeping the above in mind, and thinking about the small list of layout flaws, I can say that the K7T266 Pro-RU is a very good motherboard which you will certainly love, but I can not give it out O² Power Award because of the above. If you want a lot of expansion options, this board is the way to go for sure.