Asus A7N266-VM AA

[cheapgoose]

hey, one more thing, can someone link or just tell me the dimensions of this board? I forgot where I found it b4 but it said something like 25 cm by 25cm. just wanna make sure it's right.

tks guys.

 

[Tripleshot]

I have had 2 of these boards DOA, no post. I suspect this is a popular low cost Asus board,and I have installed at least 15 nof these already,but 2 out of 17 boards is not a good track record for me and I am getting a bit concerned. I am awaiting an RMA replacement board from Asus now.

This is not a gaming motherboard. Not with the on board video and audio. It is a fairly good SOHO mobo or email light duty web surfing home PC solution.

I do know gamers who arte using this board, but they install their own 4x AGP cards and Audigy sound cards. Then with the Xp+ CPU's and DDR, they have a low cost gaming rig.

This is a good choice for someone to start Duron and on board components and when budget allows they can expand.

On board nic is nice and all my systems run XP and no problem with driver detection.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Tripleshot
I have had 2 of these boards DOA, no post. I suspect this is a popular low cost Asus board,and I have installed at least 15 nof these already,but 2 out of 17 boards is not a good track record for me and I am getting a bit concerned. I am awaiting an RMA replacement board from Asus now.

This is not a gaming motherboard. Not with the on board video and audio. It is a fairly good SOHO mobo or email light duty web surfing home PC solution.

I do know gamers who arte using this board, but they install their own 4x AGP cards and Audigy sound cards. Then with the Xp+ CPU's and DDR, they have a low cost gaming rig.

This is a good choice for someone to start Duron and on board components and when budget allows they can expand.

On board nic is nice and all my systems run XP and no problem with driver detection.

I'll add my data to the pool. I'm 19 for 19 healthy A7N266-VM's after two to six months on the boards (we built them on a staggered timeframe). I was favorably impressed and got one for my own system and the rest are office drones.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I've only built 2 but I've got nothin' but love for this board, and for 73$ I think it's a tremendous value as well.

 

[grifterspawn]

Just built a system with this board (2nd system using it) and for some reason windows tells me when it goes to install that I dont have an acpi compatible board, the bios is the latest and all i have in it is a modem, so Im not sure what the problem is (winxp in case you are wondering). Anyone have a clue?

 

[mechBgon]

You might look into the BIOS's power-management settings. I'll poke around with mine tomorrow and report back if anything jumps out at me, but right now... I have some Mechwarrior4 Mercenaries to play.

 

[RanDum72]

I do know gamers who arte using this board, but they install their own 4x AGP cards and Audigy sound cards. Then with the Xp+ CPU's and DDR, they have a low cost gaming rig.

Actually, the only thing you need to add is a seperate video card. The built-in sound is more than enough for serious gaming and measures up well against the Audigy. 2 out of 17 is actually not bad all. I have installed more than 10 of these boards (I've lost count of how many ) and not a single one had any problems. In comparison, I've installed maybe around 15 ECS K7S5A mobos and 6 had problems.

 

[KF]

>I have had 2 of these boards DOA, no post.


I always wonder why this happens. I am reasonably sure ASUS plugs the boards in and does a routine test on every board. What happens on the way here?

 

[osage]

I understand this is not a OC type board, but what kind if any options does this board offer ? any multi, or voltage setting availible ?

thanks......osage

 

[xinco]

There's a thread on another forum I found with a google search that talks about this. It talks about how to mod the board to enable 'jumper free' mode, allowing you to overclock. If you look closely at your board, right next to the BSEL jumpers, there are solder spots where another 3pin jumper header would go. You need the proper BIOS as well. It may only work with the original BIOS, which is a concern for me at least.

Found the thread A7N266-VM overlocking

 

[DAPUNISHER]

There wer a couple of threads here at Anandtech about the overclocking mod as well link It also shows the potential pitfall involved as well

 

[osage]

thanks for the linkage, kinda interesting stuff.

 

[Toro 45]

I read the links on overclocking,so without major modding are there no optoins in the bios or jumpers on the mobo for overclocking whatsoever?

Toro

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Toro 45
I read the links on overclocking,so without major modding are there no optoins in the bios or jumpers on the mobo for overclocking whatsoever?

Toro

Right. If you want to OC, best bet is to change the CPU's multiplier on the CPU itself, or get a board that has OC features such as an EPoX 8RDA+, which is another $30 but has a lot more to offer (FireWire, USB 2.0, compatibility with 333MHz-bus AthlonXPs and probably 400MHz, six PCI slots... etc.)

 

[WT]

I'm looking at picking up this mobo from Newegg to replace a Compaq Presario rig that my sis-in-law has. The website lists the power supply as a 210 watt unit and I was wondering if this would power a Duron 800 safely in the rig. It has a minimum of components (1 HD and 1 CDRW) so its not sucking a lotta juice. One MAJOR problem I sort of foresee is the HSF rising too close to the power supply (stoopid Presario power supplys are mounted directly over the cpu which was never a problem with the K6 533 that came in the PC). If it clears the PS then I would like to use the existing case, which saves about $40. They also have Win98 and I have heard no one say it was a dream to load drivers with the board, so I'm thinking of installing W2K to save myself some time, altho I'm thinking ..... six on one, half a dozen in another at that point ...

 

[optimistic]

Originally posted by: WT
The website lists the power supply as a 210 watt unit and I was wondering if this would power a Duron 800 safely in the rig. It has a minimum of components (1 HD and 1 CDRW)

210watt? Doesn't sound like a normal PSU. Check first, and make sure it's not a proprietary PSU. If it's a standard 200w SFX PSU, I can say a confident YES to your question!

I'm running XP 1700 with mATX board, 1 CD 1 HDD, GF3 Video, SBlive, 2 Nics -works fine! Previously 1.2GHz Athlon Thunderbird.
Also got Athlon 1.0GHz running stable under 145w PSU.
And Duron 800 with 180w Powerman PSU in my L545.

They key word is "micro" ATX motherboards. If you have a smaller board to power you can get away with the smaller PSUs.

 

[optimistic]

Also you can reuse the ram (if you got PC100/133) if you go with this board.

And here's a Semi Low-Profile Socket A Heatsink/Fan and with a quiet fan or so I've read!

 

[Praxis]

Also you can reuse the ram (if you got PC100/133) if you go with this board. (Link to Newegg M7VIG for $62 delivered)

If you are thinking about the Biostar M7VIG, you might want to check out the newer version, M7VIG Pro here. Same price ($55 plus $7 S&H), plus it has some nifty new features, including USB 2.0 (2 rear ports, 4 front ports), C-Media CMI9739A 6-channel sound, a front audio port, updated VT8235 South Bridge chipset (vs. VT8233A for the M7VIG), red PCB, & the WarpSpeeder utility, which allows overclocking adjustments to voltage, FSB and multiplier from within Windows (the original M7VIG isn't much of an overclocker).

 

[optimistic]

Thanks I'm about to get this board for someone.

 

[WT]

I was actually within 5 minutes of buying the Biostar M7VIG Pro when I stumbled upon the Asus nForce board on Newegg. What I decided was that the integrated GF2 on the Asus board was worth $12 more to me than the S3 Savage on the Biostar. This PC will play a few games, MoH:AA and UT, so any extra graphics horsepower I can get will be nice. Reading the 3Dmark scores so far has been a disappointment though .. I was expecting numbers a tad closer to a GF2 card.

 

[KiltedFool]

Well, most onboard video to date IS similar to a GF2, problem is it's similar to a GF2 MX. Even the hotly anticipated Epox board with onboard GF4 video is only expected to be GF4 MX.

Only useful as a gaming board if you're not counting on the onboard video, the price is great though as a backbone of a budget gaming system with an AGP card.

KF

 

[CurtCold]

Built 2 systems with this board, and the only trouble I had with it was shutdowns. I think the culpret was a HeatSink that was installed backwards, causing the CPU to heat up too fast.

After that it was all gravy. These boards are excellent for office use. I paired mine with a 1600xp, 300watt psu, 256MBddr, and away they went.

I tried win 98se install at first, but that was kinda flakey. Installed XP, and runs like a champ!

 

[davemac]

I just put a system together with this MB and installed win98se on top of win98. That all went smoothly and all of the MB drivers seem to be working fine according to the device manager. I am curious though about the IDE controller I/F. Under device manager, the controller is recognized as a simple PCI IDE controller. It does not indicate any kind of BUS MASTER version there. I know from previous experience with Intel chipsets and others that they have provided their own bus master drivers for the chipset. But nVidia does not seem to for Win98 installation. If I enable the win98 built-in bus master mode by (I assume checking the Enable DMA box for each IDE drive), the device manager still reports the controller as a simple PCI IDE controller. Is this correct in there is no driver for the MB? Also, how can I tell bus mastering is enabled besides runnnig a disk transfer speed test?

Thanks

davemac