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Posted by
Toby Crundwell
on September 17, 2001
Manufacturer: ASUS
Product: A7A266
Socket A motherboard
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The
A7A266 is one of three new DDR RAM motherboards Asus has
released, the others being the A7M266 & A7S266. It
features the new Ali Magik chipset supporting 133Mhz FSB AMD
processors, as well as both DDR & SDR memory (more on
this later).
Acer Labs Inc. (Ali)
haven’t been very active as of late. They missed a whole
two product cycles, releasing nothing for Slot A nor 1st
generation Socket A. This in effect gave Via a monopoly on
AMD based systems. Ali hopes to reverse the trend with their
Magik 1 chipset.
Impressions
Asus
have continued their new trend with motherboard features on
the A7A, that being five PCI slots, one AGP Pro slot, one
AMR slot, no ISA slots, and extra USB ports. The lack of ISA
(hopefully) shouldn’t bother most people, but just five
PCI slots will. I always have at least five PCI cards in my
system, and after an installation of the OCZ
Titan 2 Ultra SE I was left with only four to play
around with. The AGP Pro slot is of absolutely no use for
99% of consumers, who will just be using an AGP card based
on the AGP 1.x or 2.x interface (allows up to 4x). However,
the minority of high-end systems may be fitted out for
high-end graphics work; in such case the Pro slot is a
godsend. The other small advantage the pro slot brings is
stability. Unlike some AGP designs from the likes of
Gigabyte, it features a variable voltage regulator providing
no end of current/voltage for ever more power hungry cards
in the future (power supply not withstanding). The extra USB
ports are more widely appealing; nearly everyone has one
sort of USB peripheral now. The A7A features two on-board
USB connectors plus an additional two supplied by an
offboard card. Since Asus leave a potential expansion slot
blank (above the AGP port), this is the ideal place to put
the offboard card, or alternatively, any slot still left
blank once all the cards have been installed. Unlike
previous Asus boards, the A7A does not feature an additional
offboard IDE controller for an extra four devices, although
it must be pointed out that since the Magik supports UDMA100
there would be little point to this.
The
layout of the A7A isn’t too bad either. Whilst initially
very similar to the popular A7V, the ATX connector has been
moved slightly further down the board, next to the SDR DIMM
slot, although not in a way to obstruct and other
peripherals once the power loom is attached. This didn’t
cause any problems for me & I just moved the cable to
around the corner of the board, but for those with shorter
power looms or power supplies located further away from the
board, it could mean the loom has to be dragged over the
memory slots, which apart from being awkward may cause
interference. The power LED has been moved from below the
AGP slot to the right of the board, right beneath the ATX
connector. This probably won’t mean much for those who
keep a cover on their case, but for those who leave the
cover off, or have a case window, it is much more visible.
The two DDR DIMM connectors are clearly removed from the
three SDR SIMM connectors, but not so far as to be too near
to the processor. There was a slight problem, however. The
bottom teeth for the DDR DIMM connectors are quite close to
the AGP slot. It is still possible to install/remove memory
whilst a card is in the AGP slot, but perhaps not so easy
for the big fingered. I was almost delighted to find the
floppy connector gone, but in my enthusiasm I neglected to
see it a couple of centimetres further down the board. There
are quite a few resistors/capacitors around the CPU socket,
but thankfully none would obscure a large heatsink. It makes
installing coolers “interesting” though, and for coolers
with awkward retention mechanisms it gets a little tricky.
Having said that, I installed a Speeze
cooler (albeit modified with a delta black label fan) in
a couple of seconds. The sound connectors are in a direct
line with the AGP port. This caused no problems with the
cards I was testing, but allegedly it does with cards such
as Ati’s Radeon. The solution to this is to order aboard
without onboard audio, something which most of you should be
doing anyway.
As
can be expected, the A7A came with the usual bag of Asus
goodies. One double resistor IDE cable (UDMA 66/100), one
“normal” UDMA33 cable, a floppy cable, an extra USB
card, manual, CD & an extra bag of spare jumpers. Unlike
with some high-end Intel boards, the A7A does not come with
Asus’ iPanel, even though the board supports it (more on
this later).
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