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:

We used the following test setup:

• ASUS A7N266E
• AMD Athlon XP1800+
• ASUS V8200 T5 GeForce3 Ti500
• 3 x 256 MB Mushkin High Performance CL2 PC2100 DDR
• IBM Deskstar 60GPX (30 GB)
• Pioneer 10 x DVDROM
• Windows2000 Professional

Installation of the A7N266E is straightforward, we do recommend, though that the nVidia nForce drivers should be downloaded from the nVidia site since the drivers included on the ASUS CD are older and have some problems with the sound. The BIOS was flashed to 1001B (latest version available at the time of testing).

Problems

Installing the GeForce3 Ti 500 did not go as smoothly as the rest of the setup. After trying a variety of drivers that were not accepted, starting from the original 21.81 drivers on the ASUS Ti500 CD over several 23.xx revisions up to the latest Detonator 27.xx.. Manual redirection of the install shield to the respective folders returned an empty screen for the device and the message that no suitable drivers were found. The only drivers that actually worked were the WHQL certified Detonator 21.83. There certainly are others but those were the first we found and we left it at that.

Sound Quality

Most onboard sounds, particularly AC97-based solutions have so far been less than convincing. Cackling sound, stuttering and poor quality have become somewhat synonymous for AC97. This is where the APU really excels. Regardless of whether there were games playing in the background or whether we used Ulead MediaStudio to render video files, the sound was unaffected.

next page:    => Performance =>