Navigate: Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home	.	.
Prices: CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ Search Prices:

Aside from the mainboard, ASUS ships one 80 wire UATA cable and one 40 wire UDMA33 cable along with the floppy cable, a bag of spare jumpers, an I/O shield against EMI emission, the installation CD, a quick reference card and the printed hard copy manual. Further included are two games, in this case the selection comprised StartTrek New Worlds (coming in December 2000) and Messiah, in other words, nothing really new but it is still nice to have some games handy in case the grand children show up.... In terms of hardware, ASUS further supplies a two-port USB 1.1 bracket as well as a second Serial port (the location of the standard secondary serial port is occupied by the VGA-out connector).

A novel addendum is the ACR shipped with the A7N266. As explained earlier, an ACR is the next step up from the AMR, meaning that it is basically a plug interface to the South Bridge and PCI bus to use CPU cycles for soft emulation of a variety of functions, in this case, the 6 channel audio functionality enabled by the APU. Also, as mentioned earlier, the ACR's distinguishing feature from the AMR is that it contains its own firmware using an EEPROM to eliminate some of the PnP enumeration conflicts that used to be the crux of some of the early AMR devices. We'll have more on this sound interface and how well it functions later.

The real thing: ASUS ACR with SPDIF and analog sound I/O.

As usual for ASUS, the driver CD and manual are about as good as they can be, with a very intuitive install shield on the CD. Missing from the install shield, were the Cyberlink PowerPlayer SE and Cyberlink Video LiveMail that needed to be located manually on the CD by Explore Support CD

Quality and Layout

In terms of quality, ASUS has always been at the top edge of the field, there is not much else we can add here either. Like in the case of the A7V266, ASUS relies on the OnSemi 5322A dual phase main voltage controller with all the benefits and drawbacks outlined in the earlier review. Suffice it to remind that integrating the driver chips into the main controller greatly speeds up the overall switching and enables early termination of a regulatory cycle. What it all comes down to is that a well engineered 2 phase control unit can deliver similar performance as a conventional 3 phase circuitry with external drivers that add additional latency to the switching signals.

In terms of the general layout, the A7N266-E offers a 1/5/1 (AGP/PCI/ACR) configuration that is more than sufficient for most users needs. Of particular relevance here is the fact that the sound I/O ATX connector block only features a game port interface but no audio I/O connectors. This means that one can still plug in any joystick but the on-board sound is not supported unless the ACR card bundled with the mainboard is installed.

Trademark of all nForce chipset boards so far is the 45 degree rotation of the North Bridge or IGP, a layout pioneered originally by MSI with the rationale that traces between the CPU and memory can be shorter in this configuration than with a standard orthogonal arrangement. Another trademark of the nForce chipset-based boards is the asymmetric splitting of the DIMM slots in a 1 + 2 array, similar to the early AMD 751 chipset boards. The reasoning behind this arrangement is the presence of the two independent memory controllers with the first (MC0) mapped only to the first DIMM slot and the second (MC1) shared between DIMM slots 2 and 3.

Otherwise, the only other thing standing out is the mixing of standard and OSCON capacitors which is not usually the case. The IGP is equipped with an active A.R.X. (formerly CPU-) cooler, which in the case of the test sample had the somewhat annoying habit of snaring for about 30 seconds upon every boot before resuming quiet and efficient operation.

In typical ASUS fashion, the A7N266-E features the standby power LED next to the ATX power connector placed adjacent to the UATA connectors. A second LED introduced only recently is the 3.3V AGP card warning LED underneath the AGP slot. The configuration of the AGP Pro slot with its 1.5V voltage key makes this feature somewhat redundant since there are no 3.3V AGP cards that will fit into the slot, however, this is with the caveat that not all manufacturers have always conformed to the official AGP guidelines. In other words, better safe than sorry.

next page:    => Jumpers, Connectors, BIOS =>