Print this article

Asus A7M266 DDR Motherboard


Date
: 02/22/01 – 11:28:22 AM

Author
:

Category
: Motherboard

Manufacturer: Asus

Price: around $195

Thanks to MPL for supplying us with the Asus A7M266!

Introduction

With DDR motherboards becoming more and more popular every day, we just couldn’t resist to test the first DDR motherboard from Asus, the A7M266. What exactly is the meaning of the word ‘DDR’ in the expression ‘DDR motherboard’? Well, as you probably already know for ages, the AMD Tbirds/Durons on the market today are due to run at a 100MHz FSB, that’s 200MHz DDR internally. With PC100/PC133 SDRAM running at a 100/133MHz, it’s quite obvious that you do NOT unlock the full potential of these AMD CPUs. Now that’s why DDR RAM (Double Data Rate memory) has been engineered. By using DDR RAM running synchronised @ 200MHz together with an AMD Tbird/Duron CPU running @ for example 10x100MHZ, that’s 200MHz DDR, we’re supposed to achieve higher memory performance which of course results in a higher overall system performance.

That concludes our theory lesson for today, but what does all this DDR nonsense mean in real life? Let’s find out in our Asus A7M266 review…

Specifications

Check this out: Socket A motherboard featuring the AMD 761 266MHz northbridge and the VIA 686B (UDMA 100 support) south bridge with 1 AGP, 5 PCIs (1 shared AMR) and 2 DDR DIMM sockets supporting a max of 2Gb PC1600/PC2100 DDR RAM. Quite impressive at first sight huh?!

Here’s the full spec list (copy / paste from the Asus website) :

Processor

Socket A for AMD AthlonTM / DuronTM 550MHz ~ 1GHz+ CPU

Chipset

AMD 761 266MHz FSB Chipset with VIA VT82C686B South Bridge

FSB

266/200MHz Front Side Bus

Memory

2 x DDR DIMM Sockets

Max. 2GB PC2100/PC1600 ECC/non-ECC DDR SDRAM

Expansion Slots

1 x AGP Pro/AGP 4X

4 x PCI

1 x PCI/AMR Shared

VGA

AGP Pro/4X/2X/1X Slot

IDE Ports

2 x UltraDMA/100

Audio (Optional)

C-Media CMI-8738 PCI Audio Controller

4-Channel Speaker Mode

LAN (Optional)

3Com 3C920 100/10Mbps LAN Controller

Special Features

Power Loss Recovery, ASUS JumperFreeTM, CPU Throttle, STR (Suspend-to-RAM), SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)

Back Panel I/O Ports

2 x USB Ports

1 x Parallel

2 x Serial

1 x PS/2 Keyboard

1 x PS/2 Mouse

1 x Audio I/O (Optional)

1 x Game/MIDI (Optional)

1 x RJ-45 (Optional)

Onboard I/O Interface

One Header Supports Additional 2 USB Ports

24-pin ASUS iPanel

SIR (Integrated Serial Infrared)

Headphone

MIC

CD / AUX / Modem Audio in

CPU / Power Supply / Chassis Fan

ATX Power

IDE LED

BIOS

2Mb Award BIOS, PnP, ACPI, SMBIOS 2.3, Trend ChipAway Virus (TCAV), Green, Boot Block, BIOS

Industrial Standard

PCI v2.2, USB v1.1

Manageability

WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL, WOR, Chassis Intrusion, SMBus

Accessories

User’s Manual

Support CD

UltraDMA/66/100 Cable

IDE Cable

Floppy Cable

2-Ports USB Bracket

Board Size

ATX Form Factor: 9.6′ x 12.0′ (24.5cm x 30.5cm)

There seem to be three different versions of this board on the market: one with onboard audio, one with an integrated LAN controller and one with both of these features. I don’t know exactly if there are A7M266 boards on the market with none of these two features onboard. You should decided for yourself which board corresponds best to you wishes, but in my opinion, the one with LAN controller and without onboard audio is the perfect choice because onboard audio only makes te board more expensive and the sound quality is always terrible! The version we tested is the one with onboard audio and without LAN controller.

Now let’s discuss some specs in detail…

The Specs In Detail

Like I said before, the Asus A7M266 supports up to 2GB of either PC1600 (or PC100 DDR) or PC2100 (or PC133 DDR) DDR RAM in 2 DDR DIMM sockets right next to the CPU socket. The heart of this motherboard is the AMD 760 chipset (the chip with the active cooling on top). This chipset consists of the AMD 761 system controller (
northbridge
) and the AMD 766 peripheral bus controller. Don’t pay that much attention to these names as they will only get you confused. I’ll try to explain the function of each part of the AMD 760 chipset as easy as possible. Yes, it’s actually pretty easy :)

Part 1 of the AMD 760 chipset and the most innovative part is the AMD 761 northbridge. It’s this northbridge that allows the A7M266 to support DDR RAM, a 266MHz FSB, AGP4X and 5 PCIs.

Part 2 of the AMD 760 chipset is the AMD 766 system controller which, as the name already suggests, controls the communication between the CPU and the expansion cards, USB devices, etc.

The VIA 686B
on the A7M266 features UltraDMA/100 support and up to 4 USB ports; 2 on the back panel of the board and 2 more can be added by installing an expansion card. The A7M266 box contains these 2 extra USB ports on a small hub that fits in a card bay, although not many people will ever use them.

The A7M266 has an AGP (Pro) slot,5 PCI slots and a shared AMR slot. Again, Asus’ choice for including an AMR slot, onboard audio and/or a LAN controller (on some versions), suggests that this board is not only intended for the overclocking community, but also for OEM customers who like to use a high performance DDR board with onboard features to keep down the price of their system.

When you take a good look at the A7M266, you’ll immediately notice that the board has been designed to support 3 DDR DIMM sockets, but due to stability issues, this number has been reduced to ‘only’ two. :(

The space next to the CPU socket is … let’s say pretty limited; at least on the left side of the socket. That’s not so funny when you’re using those big ass coolers. I tried out some coolers for you & here are the results :

• Super Orb : Don’t use a copper shim and it’ll fit perfectly
• Mini Super Orb : Same thing here!
• Tt’s Volcano II : no probs, even with a copper shim installed
• OCZ Monster II & Quad Cool : HSF + copper shim => no probs
• Alpha PEP66T : perfect fit even with a copper shim on its but
• GlobalWin FOP38 : what do you think? Yep, that’s a go!
• GlobalWin VOS32 : Yep, I also tried to install this beast onto the A7M266 but sadly enough it wouldn’t fit :( After I removed the fan on the chipset, I’d put the VOS32 onto the CPU but the holes on the motherboard didn’t match the mounting mechanism of the VOS32!

Here are some pics :

Well, it sure looks like the Orbs are the only coolers in our little test that give us a headache again. Maybe I’m a little overreacting here, but I wouldn’t advise an Orb together with a copper shim on this mobo.

Because I’m reviewing the A7M266 version with onboard audio, I’m practicly forced to say something about it. Asus chose to install the C-Media CMI-8738 PCI Audio Controller on their A7M266. I find this to be a very wise choice, because this audio controller produces the best sound quality I’ve ever heard from an onboard audio controller. Don’t get me wrong here & bare in mind that although the quality is acceptable, you won’t be getting SoundBlaster PCI128 or Live! quality.

One last thing I need to tell you: Asus’ excellent reputation of including well-written manuals in its packages continues. The A7M266 box contains a nice 104 page manual with all the necessary information to install this mobo.

Overclocking

On jumperfree setting, the BIOS can control the FSB speed; the FSB can be upped from 100 to 180 Mhz (200 to 360 MHz DDR) in 1MHz increments. BUT, that’s about all you can change in the BIOS!! I can hear you ask ‘Where’s the multiplier control? And what about voltage settings?’ Well, I asked myself these same questions, but no one answered :( The fact that this mobo does
not
support multiplier control, neither in the BIOS or by DIP switches on the board is not a good thing! So I guess, it’s bye bye to the benefits you get from pencilling the L1 bridges to unlock your CPU. However, if we look very closely to the board, we can clearly see the DIP switch table with the combination settings to adjust the multiplier. But the DIP switches to actually do this are missing.

As I already told you earlier, the FSB speed can be controlled by the BIOS and also by DIP switches on the board. The core voltage, the clock generator and the DDR RAM voltage can only be adjusted by jumpers on the motherboard. The core voltage range lies between 1.075v and 1.850v, the clock generator voltage has to be selected between 3.30v and 3.56v and the DDR RAM voltage can be set from 2.7v (default) to 2.9v. I experienced that changing the clock generator voltage and the voltage that goes to the DDR RAM does not have any influence on our overclocking adventure!

I was able to push my Duron 800 past the 1GHz speedmark by using the OCZ Monster II as cooler; but of course 1GHz wasn’t enough so I was eager to see how much higher my Duron would go on this mobo by just changing the FSB (because there is no multiplier control present, remember?). With a voltage limit of 1.850v and a FSB speed of 132MHz (264MHz DDR), I was able to run my Duron 800 @ a rockstable 1056MHz which is actually pretty good considering the fact that I’m using CAS 2 PC1600 RAM (PC100 DDR) with a 132MHz (264MHz DDR) FSB! I really like that OCZ Performance PC-1600 DDR RAM (expect a review of this RAM soon :)

Benchmarking

System setup

- Asus A7M266 DDR motherboard / Abit KT7A-RAID (reviewed here)

- OCZ Monster II cooler (kindly supplied by OCZ)

- AMD Duron 800

- 128MB OCZ Performance PC-1600 DDR RAM

- Western Digital UDMA100 45GB 7200RPM hard drive

- Creative Annihilator Pro (GeForce 256 DDR not overclocked)

- Win2k + SP1

- DirectX 8a + Detonator 6.50 + VIA 4.25a

I performed all the testing with a Duron 800 @ 1GHz because this way we can compare my results with some benchmark results from other motherboards we reviewed earlier.

Sisoft Sandra 2001 Pro

When we look at the Duron scores, we can see no or very little difference between the different FSB speeds at the same CPU speed.

Again, there are no significant difference between a 100MHz FSB, a 133MHz FSB and a DDR bus in this benchmark. Surprised? Let’s see some more…

The Asus A7M266 shows its true power here. In the memory benchmark of course!! Although we can say that a KT133A motherboard could catch up with the A7M266′s scores after doing some tweaks.

CPU Mark 99

And again the same results! Looks like CPUs running on the same speed are not affected by the motherboard on this benchmark. Boring huh?! I know! :)

FPU Mark 99

I’m not saying another word!

Quake 3 Arena 1.27h beta Timedemo 1

One test, one result here: Quake 3′s timedemo 1 @ 640×480 / 16-bit to make sure the videocard is not being the bottleneck again. The result : 127,3 FPS. This is only a tad faster than the 121,1 FPS that I get on my KT7-RAID. But can we conclude that games like high FSBs?

Good

- Onboard UDMA100 support (VIA 686B)

- Perfectly stable (even when overclocked)

- Overclocks smoothly

- 266MHz FSB CPU support

Bad

- Lack of RAID support

- No ISA

- Only 5 PCI slots (is this really a con these days?)

- Expensive

- No multiplier adjustment at all!

- Space around the CPU socket can be crappy

Conclusion

When it comes to raw performance, the Asus A7M266 surely is not the fastest socket A board out there. Now that we’ve seen the true ‘power’ of the AMD 760 chipset, I must say that I’m not that impressed at all! With a little tweaking I believe that the Abit KT7A-RAID comes very close to the A7M266′s memory performance and it has a lot more features @ a much lower price (because you need to buy new DDR SDRAM for your A7M266). Let me get one last thing straight here: the Asus A7M266 is a great board. I’ve been testing it for nearly a week now and it combines great overclocking with outstanding stability and DDR performance. The only thing that really sucks here, is the lack of multiplier control! So, if you ask me what motherboard to buy at this moment, I’d say ‘Buy a non-DDR board’ or wait for better and improved DDR mainboards to come out! But who am I to tell you what to buy? :)