The A7V333: Following in Asus reliability
Written: Dec 29 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great options, overclocking feature, and ASUS reliability
Cons: not stable when using a gig or more of RAM
The Bottom Line: Due to the great features and reliability (except for the aforementioned exception) this board gets 4 starts. If they had the memory bugs fixed, it would get a perfect rating.
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| scarphace's Full Review: ASUS VIA KT333 Chipset A7V333 (A7V333/PA/RAID/U2/1... |
When preparing for college, I decided to build my own computer. Upon making this decision, I had a multitude of parts, companies, and styles to choose from. Since a motherboard is so critical to your system, I wanted to buy from a company with proven reliability, so I was either going to pick an Asus or Abit motherboard. Because of options, reviews and price I decided to go with the Asus A7V333.
The A7V333 is a Socket A motherboard. This means that it supports AMD Athlon processors. So far I have been very happy with my motherboard. It’s stable (except when you try to use a gig or more of RAM) and has lots of nice features. It also boasts many overclocking features, but unfortunately I have not tried these out (I’m waiting on my water cooling system hehe. An OC update will be coming later) Here is a break down of some of my favorite features of the A7V333.
Asus C.O.P (CPU Overheating Protection)
This is one of my favorite aspects of this motherboard. Most mother boards monitor the temperature of the CPU via a diode under the processor. The problem with this method is that the diode can only detect a one degree change in temperature every second. Normal temperature variation is effectively monitored by this diode because CPU’s don’t usually have great fluctuations in temperature. But if your heat sink broke (causing your CPU’s temperature to jump drastically), the diode would not be able to shut off power to your processor in time to avoid frying your computer.
Asus C.O.P is a hardware protection circuit that is able to keep up with rapid temperature changes. Thus, it automatically shuts down your system power before temperatures go high enough to permanently damage your CPU.
DDR333 (PC2700) Support
DDR333 (PC2700), is the second fastest memory standard to date (the fastest being DDR400). In theory the board should support up to 2.7GB/s of RAM, but when installed 1 GB of RAM on my board it became unstable. Ahwell, I didn’t really need to be using 1 gig of RAM anyway. Hehe
RAID ATA133 (optional)
The A7V333 supports ATA133 hard drives with RAID 0 (striping) or RAID 1 (mirror), with the onboard Promise 20276 RAID controller. This feature is nice if you want to use RAID because it eliminates the cost of additional add-on cards.
USB 2.0 Ready
USB 2.0 is the latest USB standard, and it is backward compatible with current USB 1.1 peripherals so all of your older USB devices will work with USB 2.0. USB 2.0 offers transfer speeds up to 40 times faster at 480MB/s than its predecessor.
6-Channel Audio (optional)
Another goodie that ASUS has added to the A7V333 is built on channel audio. The A7V333 uses an onboard C-Media 8738 audio controller that lets you play 6-channel audio without having to buy advanced sound cards. While this is a nice option for the price conscious, I would recommend that you buy a sound card. Quality sound cards can be bought for 60 dollars, and you will be guaranteed crisp full-body sound.
Asus MyLogo™
More of a cool extra item that the people at Asus added to their motherboard was Asus MyLogo™. This allows you to personalize your boot process by letting you choose a picture to be displayed every time that your computer boots.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 125
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Epinions.com ID:
scarphace
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Location: Washington DC
Reviews written: 51
Trusted by: 12 members
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