A7V133 or A7A266...which should I choose???

[NMK]

I'm in need of the opinions of the Asus Mobo users out there...

If you could get the A7V133 or the A7A266 today, at the same price, which would you choose?

From what I've been reading on this board and elsewhere, it seems there have been quite a few folks who have had some stability issues with the A7A266. Are these still a problem, or have these problems been resolved to the point where the board can be considered a stable platform for overclocking?

I plan to run a Duron 900 on the board with 256 MB of SDRAM, and while the A7V133 would do this just fine, it seems like the A7A266 would be a more open-ended choice, for faster CPUs & RAM in the future...but is it a risky choice from a stability standpoint?

Any opinions or recommendations are truly appreciated!


Thanks...........Noel

 

[n2]

hey!
i'd say A7A266 over the A7V as i like future options, myself.
but i chose the iwill KK266-R, and it's been very stable.
newegg.com has em' cheap as heck, and i had a great experience dealing with em'

look into the iwill before you make your purchase, aside from that...
i have'nt heard much about anyone disliking the A7A266, much to the opposite, it seems to be a good board, at least for stock use. maybe overclocking it lessens it's stability tho... i'm sure some of the more experienced will post on this. wish i could be more help, good luck!

 

[SickBoy]

If you're asking..... I'll tell you neither.

The A7V133 has had more unsolved problems, from what I hear, as opposed to a KT7A or a KK266 or a K7T Turbo.

The A7A266 doesn't have multiplier adjustment (or it didn't..... I'm pretty sure the only way to achieve this is through a mod, which, if you ask me, is too much to have to do to a new mobo to get multiplier adjustment). There are better DDR solutions out there, and if there isn't one you like now, just wait a month or two and you'll have more options.

That's my 2 Cents.

SickBoy

 

[NMK]

Hi Sickboy,

Thanks for the input...unfortunately though, through some unusual circumstances, I'm in the unique position of having to choose one or the other...no other manufacturer is an option.

By the way, if you read through the PDF copy of the A7A266 manual at the Asus web site, it shows a clock multiplier setting in BIOS, as well as a Vcore setting, when running in 'jumperfree' mode, and I have spoken with the tech support at Asus and they assure me it can adjust both of these settings via BIOS.


Thanks.........Noel

 

[Tomas]

i would have choosen the a7v133 if i was u!! The a7a266 dosent support multipiler in bios or with dipswitches. But i know they gonna release one with support for it. a7v133 has been really stable and oc nice!! got my SHITTY [email protected] (avha) which i couldnt get stable on 1.2 on my abit kt7.

The only problem i had with this board was that the chipset fan suddently stopped working had to swap it with an other one like the blueorb but its black and smaller. But all works fine now

 

[NMK]

Hi Tomas,

Thanks for your reply, but as with SickBoy above, I think you're mistaken about the clock multiplier, at least with the current revision of the board. if you visit the following Asus URL:

http://www.asus.com/products/Motherboard/socketa/a7a266/jumper.html

you will see that the A7A266 now has a 10 position dipswitch on it that, among other things, enables configuration of the multiplier.

Thanks..........Noel

 

[bubu]

my A7A266 has the 10 multiplier dip switches...from 1333 @ 1400 without any effort here.

 

[Nagorak]

IF the board has multiplier adjustments I'd choose the A7A266 hands down over the A7V133. I'm really kind of disgusted with my via motherboards. Via chipsets seem to be a totally mixed bag. Some mobos with via work fine, other are unstable and calls all kinds of problems. In two nearly identical systems one is having major stability problems and crashes in games, while the other runs perfectly fine. After this experience I think I'm going to try to avoid via chipsets at all costs in the future...

I'm not sure why the Ali Aladdin chipset got such bad press. It IS faster than PC133 chipsets, even if it is slower than the AMD 760. It's certainly just as good as the crappy KT266 chipset. And, hopefully it will be a little more stable than those too.

 

[NMK]

Thanks to everyone who replied to this message, you've all helped me make my decision, and I think I actually have made the correct one (A7A266)!


Best Regards,

Noel