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A direct comparison between the A7V333 and its predecessor A7V266-E shows a few similarities but also quite a few deviations of the new board from the older one. The most prominent change is the obliteration of active cooling of the North Bridge in favor of the same bulky passive heatsink that also decorates the A7M266D. What has not changed is the general arrangement of components and standard connectors. In short, we still find the CPU socket in N-W orientation and extremely close to the three DIMM slots. We still see the two standard IDE ports below the two RAID channels enabled by a Promise controller and the floppy drive connector horizontally oriented at the bottom of the PCB. Also, we still have five PCI and one AGP Pro slot. Unchanged are the position of the ATX power connector and the standby power LED as well.

VIA USB 2.0 Controller

Thus far, USB 2.0 has been the domain of NEC with their different variations of USB2.0 controller chips in QFP or BGA format. This will certainly change in the near future since VIA's own USB controller chip (VT6202) has rolled out a few weeks ago and will, by sheer convenience, replace the NEC IC on VIA chipset-based mainboards. The A7V333 is the first board where we see this particular on-board USB 2.0 interface but it'll move into the mainboard field very fast.

CMedia Onboard Sound

The 6-channel CMI8378 chip has almost become a commodity with high-end mainboards and the only serious competition is the on-board Sound-Blaster as seen on some GigaByte boards. The sound quality is more than acceptable and makes any additional sound card rather superfluous which is just another reason for the above-mentioned lack of the ACR slot, there is simply no need for another, software-based audio interface.

The included backpanel bracket features two IEEE 1394 Firewire ports. The wide connector on the cable plugs into the mainboard IEEE 1394 connector.

IEEE 1394 OnBoard Firewire

A novel integrated peripheral is the on-board IEEE 1394a Firewire using the TexasInstruments TSB43AB21 chip. This IEEE 1394a integrated link controller and physical layer (PHY) device features an integrated 400-megabit per second (Mbps) 1-port compatible with version 1.1 of the Open Host Control Interface (OHCI) specification. Intelligent integrated power management and a 1.8-V core operating voltage with universal PCI interfaces compatible with 3.3-V and 5-V PCI signaling environments make the TI controller the probably most suitable IC for integrated Firewire. Keep in mind that this particular chip only features a single port. This also means that one needs to make a decision which of the two interfaces offered on the bracket will be used since the cable can only be connected to one of the two interfaces at the time.

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