Foreward

Asus A7M266 AMD 760 Motherboard Review

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

Although a little late in its debut, it is AMDMB’s objective to highlight Asus’ A7M266 in its correct and deliberate configuration. That is 266MHz FSB processor support and PC2100 memory. Currently, there are approximately ten or so A7M266 reviews available on the Internet. Unfortunately, many are deficient in the appropriate processor and or memory configuration. Fortunately, AMDMB intends to present a different perspective with today’s review. It is going to be concise and deliver the proper message to prospective consumers. It will present a theoretical bleu-print between the performance of the Asus’ A7M266 and its predecessor, the A7V. With this information, you, the consumer will be able to determine if the value of said product displays a compelling value to justify an upgrade; or further support the argument to wait for AMD’s next manifestation.

The A7M266 is Asus’ flagship AMD761-based motherboard. The key difference between the A7M266 and its predecessors is 133MHz FSB support and DDR-SDRAM compatibility. The AMD-760 chipset consists of the AMD-761 system controller in a 569-pin plastic ball-grid array (PBGA) package. The AMD-761 system controller features the AMD Athlon system bus, DDR-SDRAM system memory controller, accelerated graphics port (AGP4X) controller, and peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus controller. Rather than cut and past the specifications of the A7M266 from Asus’ website like many others do, and given the technological aptitude of our members, I will refrain from doing so and simply provide a link to said motherboard.

Asus A7M266 AMD 760 Motherboard Review - Motherboards 18
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Asus A7M266 AMD 760 Motherboard Review - Motherboards 19
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The AMD reference system block diagram of the A7M266, features AMD’s 761 266MHz FSB chipset with VIA’s VT82C686B South Bridge.

The test system under Windows2000 Professional:

Asus A7M266 Asus A7V
AMD Athlon 1GHz/266 AMD Athlon 1GHz/200
Mushkin 256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM Mushkin 256MB PC150 SDRAM
Creative Labs GeForce Ultra Creative Labs GeForce Ultra
ATTO UL3D RAID Controller ATTO UL3D RAID Controller
Four Seagate X15’s Striped at 32KB Four Seagate X15’s Striped at 32KB

The applications executed:

3DMark2000 3DMark 2000 is a synthetic Direct3D benchmark, Stresses the CPU, graphics card, and memory system.
Content Creation WinStone 2001 Winbench, Winstone, and Content Creation are Synthetic Windows tests. They test such applications such as Word, Excel, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Premiere.
SiSoft Sandra CPU Benchmark SiSoft Sandra 2001 is a Synthetic Windows benchmark. It stresses CPU, Memory, Hard Disk, and CPU Instructions.
SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmark SiSoft Sandra 2001 is a Synthetic Windows benchmark. It stresses CPU, Memory, Hard Disk, and CPU Instructions.
Expendable Time Demo Expendable is famous for its sensitivity regarding memory latencies, and bandwidth. Many regard Expendable as a closer measurement of memory performance than SiSoft Sandra’s Memory Benchmark.
Quake3 Bench Quake III Arena is a real-world OpenGL benchmark. Stresses the video card, memory, and stresses the CPU.
SPEC view perf SPEC view perf is an OpenGL performance benchmark problem. SPECviewperf parses command lines and data files, sets the rendering state, and converts data sets to a format that can be transversed using OpenGL rendering calls.
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