Written By:
Date Posted: April 1, 2002

shouldn't need any introduction. Long known for their quality products, in most likelihood, at one time, your PC was probably powered by Asus. In terms of motherboards, they've always been among the fastest available, and are well regarded for their stability.

The A7V266-E is the upgrade to their excellent A7V266. There were not many changes from the A7V266 we looked at awhile back, but there are a couple worth noting. They have added RAID, courtesy of the Promise "Lite", and more notably, the VIA KT266A chipset. The KT266A is the update to the much maligned KT266, and is widely regarded, until the KT333 was released last month, as the AMD chipset to have. Considering the marginal improvements in the KT333, there isn't any shame in owning the KT266A with this current crop of AMD CPUs.

Specifications

Supports Socket A Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron processors @ 200/266MHz Front-Side-Bus (FSB)
VIA KT266A VT8366 North Bridge chipset with VT8233 South Bridge
3 DIMM slots support up to 3GB PC1600/PC2100 DDR SDRAM
Ultra-DMA 33/66/100
AGP Pro slot with AGP4X support
Up to six USB Ports, five PCI slots, one AMR shared slot, two serial ports, one parallel port
Optional C-Media CMI8738 6-Channel audio controller
Optional Promise RAID controller
Wake-On-LAN, Wake-On-Ring, Chassis Intrusion support
Smart Card Reader (SCR) interface support
ASUS PC Health Monitoring" and ASUS PC Probe" software

The Bundle

Trend Micro" PC-cillin 2000 Retail anti-virus program
ASUS PC Health Monitoring and ASUS PC Probe
Cyberlink® PowerPlayer SE", Video Live Mail" Retail

The KT266A

Like the KT133A was to the KT133, the KT266A is an upgrade to the KT266. Here are more official specifications...

Supports AMD Duron" and Athlon" Socket A processors
200/266MHz FSB settings
Support for AGP 2X/4X
Supports up to 4.0GB DDR200/266 SDRAM as well as PC100/133 SDRAM and Virtual Channel memory
266MB/sec high bandwidth North/South Bridge V-Link
Support for Advanced Communications Riser (ACR) Card Standard
Integrated 6 channel AC-97 Audio
Integrated MC-97 Modem
Integrated 10/100 BaseT Ethernet and 1/10Mb HomePNA controller
Support for ATA 33/66/100
6 USB ports, UHCI compliant
Advanced power management capabilities including ACPI/OnNow and AMD's PowerNow"
552-pin BGA VT8366A North Bridge
376-pin BGA VT8233 South Bridge

Of course, the most important consumer features are the Athlon 200/266 Front Side Bus, and DDR Ram support. As explained on the first page, the V-Link is a proprietary link between the Northbridge and Southbridge, bypassing the PCI bus. At 266MHz, it's double the speed as well. The KT266A is pin compatible with the KT266, so it's a simple upgrade for manufacturers to replace their KT266 motherboards with the newer chipset. Unfortunently for the end-user, this is done at the factory, and you cannot do this yourself.

VIA's technology can be explained in their block diagram...

Although the VT8233 Southbridge supports integrated Ethernet, our board did not include it, since it'll be up to manufacturers what supported features they should add.

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