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Summary

After more or less skipping the VIA KT266 chipset, ASUS releases its view of what a KT266A chipset-based mainboard is supposed to look like. Loaded with features like support for the iPanel, SmartCard reader and onboard CMedia 6-channel sound including SPDIF support, the A7V266-E is bound for success. Using new power-supply technology supplied by ON-Semiconductor with the MOSFET drivers integrated in the core controller, ASUS does away with 2 phases, yet manages to achieve a superlative in stability, particularly under overclocked conditions. In some applications, the A7V266-E does not quite reach the performance of competing boards, other applications see the board outperforming the competition. Some issues remain with the board in terms of what appears to be redundant jumpers and some BIOS explanations could use some polishing as well to fit the actual settings. Some other issues concern the hardware monitor interfacing, particularly core voltage and temperature monitoring. Despite these shortcomings, the A7V266-E is probably the way to go for a high-end platform for the Athlon Palomino.

There were some KT 266-based ASUS board circulating in the far east, some reached the US and US-based review sites but all these boards had one thing in common: they were very inconsistent amongst each other. Boards with hybrid memory interface (both DDR and SDRAM) and boards with DDR only were spotted and in general, there was just enough confusion to keep the discussion open without any product ever reaching the retail shelves. Aggravating the situation were early rumors about a new spin of the VIA KT266 chipset boosting performance to the levels of the AMD and ALi chipset that, thus far, were not possible to achieve with the VIA chipset.

By now, we know that VIA in fact did come out with a new chipset revision with deeper IOQ pipelines and the option of using 4 clock cycle transfer length for a burst of 8 bits per output pin as opposed to the earlier revision that carried over the original burst of 4 from the SDRAM version but squeezed it into 2 DDR cycles. This latter scheme of operation was the secret behind the lower performance of the VIA chipset since initial latencies were dis-proportionally high compared to the amount of data output unless the controller stayed in page.

After the introduction of the VIA KT266A chipset with all the improvements listed above, everyone still had to clear out their inventories which is why some of the smaller players are still listing their original KT266 boards as top models. Other companies either did not have inventory or else they moved enough volume to quickly replace the older chipset with the -A revision. ASUS, we don't know what they did but they were not the first to come out with a new board, those honors go to MSI and Shuttle, closely followed by EPoX.

Anyway, the ice is broken, play-time for the new ASUS A7V266-E which may or may not have some surprises.

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