I have the same board as you - A7V266. I've flashed my BIOS before. It's very simple to do - ASUS even provides your "dummies guide to flashing BIOS" on their site. All you need is the flashing utility, which can be found
here , and an image file (this is what your BIOS will actually be written as) which can be found
here. Copy both of these files to a bootable system floppy, record both the full name of the flash utility and the full name of the track image, and shut down your computer. Open your case and look for the CMOS battery. There should be a jumper right next to it that says CLR_RTC. First, unplug your computer, then remove the battery. After you do this, replace the battery, and short the jumper by placing a jumper block over both pins. Then replug your computer, and boot it using the system disk with the track image and flashing utility on them. Wait for all the drivers to load, and when A:/> is displayed, type in the name of the flash utility you recorded earlier, and press enter. Then select the option that involves flashing the motherboard BIOS. It will ask you for the full name of the track image, so type in A:/(name of image).awd. It will then flash the BIOS.
There aren't any BIOS updates to support chips of a higher speed, although there should (or even will) be some later on down the road with the XP 2100+ coming out next week and the 2200+ maybe in a matter of a month, about. The exact speed the A7V266-E is capable of handling is unknown to me. The FSB can be overclocked very high, and still run stable, as with the multiplier, so I don't believe you'll need a BIOS revision for any future Socket-A based Athlon.
Those horror stories were probably from me, they mostly involve older system boards, where flashing the BIOS was very risky. Today's boards can be flashed incident free dozens of times, if nothing goes wrong during the flash. (power outage...:dead
Good luck if you plan on flashing your BIOS. It's very easy.
And now to end the longest post of my 3DSpotlight career
