Wednesday, February 14, 2001

Introduction

Every time we receive an Asus motherboard to review, we are immediately hit by a sense of high technology & hidden treasures - a sense that is very rarely shattered in the course of our analysis. Today, we'll be reviewing the Asus A7M266, which is based around the AMD761 Northbridge, and VIA VT82C686B Southbridge - a configuration much like that of the GA-7DX motherboard we reviewed in our earlier introduction to DDR266 memory, and the new AMD Athlon Thunderbird with the 133MHz bus. Without further ado then, let's head in to the meat of the analysis. Below, you can find a summation of the nomenclature associated with the A7M266:

Configuration

Configuration of the A7M266 is accomplished either through the setting of various Dip switches and jumpers, or from the BIOS menus.

As is often the case on Asus's boards, users receive the option of utilizing a "Jumperfree" setup whereupon all changes can be made through the BIOS itself. Contrary to its track-record, though, Asus has apparently not reproduced all the functionality of the on-board Dip switches and jumpers in the BIOS. This weakness is not the fault of Asus per se though, as it seems the AMD761 is rather restrained in its functionality. That said, unlike the Gigabyte GA-7DX, the Asus A7M266 gets around these weak spots by including a wide array of Dips and Jumpers implanted in the board's circuitry.

To make use of the A7M266's switches and jumpers, users must first set jumper JEN to position 1-2. To set the board to "Jumperfree" mode, JEN must be set to 2-3, and jumpers VID1 through VID4 to 3-4. The Dips labeled DSCKF can be used to set the board's FSB frequency to: 100MHz, 103MHz, 105MHz, 110MHz, 115MHz, or 133MHz. To access this same functionality through the BIOS, the board must be set to "Jumperfree" mode, otherwise it becomes inaccessible through the menu system.

Another set of jumpers labeled VIO and VIO1 can be used to alter the processor's VIO voltage. To change the Vcore voltage of the CPU, users must use jumpers VID1 through VID4. Unfortunately, the Vcore cannot be changed from within the A7M266's BIOS.

Finally, we must attest to the absence of any option permitting to change the processor's clock multiplier setting. This is a bit unusual for Asus, as they have been in the habit of including this feature on the vast majority of their boards in the past.

One last note must be made of the fact that the memory bus cannot act independently of the FSB. As a result, users may want to avoid installing DDR200 (PC1600) memory in their A7M266 systems, less their CPUs end up running on a 100MHz FSB. The same result occurs if your CPU runs at 100MHz, and your memory at 133MHz - the lower speed rules.

Next: Technical details.