Solid budget board with stable drivers for most O/Ses
Written: Jul 02 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Integrated A/V/L, built-in speaker, solidly built, mature chipset and drivers, inexpensive, uATX form factor.
Cons: Mediocre performance, DIMM slots clash with AGP slot, no adapters for COM2 or USB headers.
The Bottom Line: I would recommend this board for anyone needing a reliable budget solution for everyday computing tasks and some light gaming.
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| dellis78741's Full Review: Gigabyte GA-7VKMP Motherboard |
I build this board into restaurant P.O.S. (Point of sale) terminals. I'm always looking for a better solution and try to stay with AMD-based products. I used to use AMD 761-based boards because of their stability and support for ECC memory but they have become too scarce. Next up was the ASUS A7N266-VM but that boards' Win98 support is poor, in particular, add-in COM port cards are flaky on that board. Since the POS software we use still requires Windows 98 I had to take a step back and use an older chipset. I had built several KM266-based systems in the past and found them to be temperamental - one had to install cards and software in a particular order to not upset the apple cart. Still, once a stable setup is reached, it can be cloned. When I had used the 761-based boards they were Giga-Byte and I had actually gotten E-mail requests (for updated BIOS with Duron 1.3 support) answered promptly, so I decided to try their KM266 solution.
The GA-7VKMP debuted late compared to many other KM266-based systems (fall 2002)and Giga-Byte seems to have spent the extra time ensuring that the board would be a stable performer. Date stamps on the various ICs on the board show that it is still being actively manufactured, and that they are not just selling off overstock. The CPU lever is metal and there are holes drilled for mounting a big HFS and clearance around the CPU socket for most of them, too. Plastic pads help protect the PCB from wayward screwdrivers trying to secure the HSF. The Power connecter socket is near the front of the board and may interfere with CD-ROM drives in some cases but that was not an issue for me. All jumpers are labeled and the LED connectors even indicate polarity. An onboard LED alerts the operator to live power and an onboard speaker takes care of basic beeps and boops. 3 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot. The rear of the AGP slot is nearly in contact with the end of the two DIMM slots and if you ever install an AGP card you will have to remove it whenever you want to swap out DDR DIMMs. Headers for 2 more pairs of USB (1.1) connectors and a header for COM2. There are no adapters included in the package to bring either the USB or COM2 out to the back panel or elsewhere. The lack of a COM2 adapter was annoying. Many other similar KM266-based motherboards don't even have a header for COM2 and one of the pluses I saw in this board was the inclusion of that header. I can hunt one down but it really should be included in the package. The usual backside connectors - Kbd, Mouse, 2xUSB, LAN, LPT, Video, COM1, 6 channel sound.
Installation is straightforward. Win98, drivers, all Win98 updates and patches, then applications. So far these boards have worked like champs. The video pretty much precludes playing any recent FPS games and the other subsystems won't wow anyone but that's not the target market for this board. For a basic, inexpensive computer for everyday tasks and reliable operation this is probably the best value out there.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 61
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Epinions.com ID:
dellis78741
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Location: Austin, TX
Reviews written: 1
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