MSI K7T266Pro2-RU Motherboard Review
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A DDR Motherboard worth upgrading to? I have patiently seen several of the new DDR motherboards hit the market, only to wonder if such an upgrade was necessary or even warranted. The benchmarks on the KT266 motherboards did not impress me all that much, and with the stability and performance of the KT133A chipset based boards, I figured, why upgrade? Well my friends, with the introduction of the KT266A chipset, it may now be time to take the DDR plunge.
Company: MSI
Product: K7T266 Pro2-RU Motherboard
Availability: In online stores now
Price: $135.00
Introduction: A DDR Motherboard worth upgrading to? I have patiently seen several of the new DDR motherboards hit the market, only to wonder if such an upgrade was necessary or even warranted. The benchmarks on the KT266 motherboards did not impress me all that much, and with the stability and performance of the KT133A chipset based boards, I figured, why upgrade? Well my friends, with the introduction of the KT266A chipset, it may now be time to take the DDR plunge.
DDR Explained: DDR or Double Data Rate Memory is similar to typical SDRAM (Single Data Rate Memory) but doubles the rate by transferring data twice per cycle. It transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock, theoretically providing twice the memory bandwidth of SDRAM. I do emphasize the word theoretically. As we all know. DDR is much faster, but we don't see double the performance as SDRAM. Still, the gains are there and are an evolutional step in the process of attaining higher speeds, better graphics, and faster handling of programs and applications.
Currently, there are 3 official types of DDR memory on the market. PC1600, PC2100 and PC2400 DDR Memory. DDR333 has been announced and seems to be backward compatible with other DDR, but has yet to be seen. Defining DDR is fairly simple. PC1600 provides 1.6GB/second memory bandwidth running at 100MHz. PC2100 provides 2.1GB/second memory bandwidth while running at 133MHz. PC2400 provides 2.4GB/second @150MHz and so on. You get the picture. Higher is always faster, and faster is better.
DDR also required less voltage than SDRAM. DDR uses 2.5v as opposed to SDRAM which uses 3.3v.
Ok, now that we have that initial information out of the way, we can concentrate on the motherboard itself. The MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU which utilizes the VIA KT266A chipset. It seems VIA has got the kinks worked out of their DDR platform and produced another top-notch performance chipset in the KT266A. Lets take a look at the layout of this particular board.
Here are the official specs of the board.
| CPU |
| | Supports Socket A (Socket-462) for AMD® Athlon™ / Athlon™ XP / Duron™ processor
Supports 800MHz up to 1800+ MHz processor |
| Chipset |
| | VIA® KT266A (552BGA) Chipset
- FSB @200/266MHz
- AGP 4X and PCI Advanced high performance memory controller
VIA® VT8233 (376BGA) Chipset
- High Bandwidth V-link Client controller
- Integrated Faster Ethernet LPC
- Integrated Hardware Sound Blaster/Direct Sound AC97 audio
- Ultra DMA 33/66/100 master mode PCI EIDE controller
- ACPI |
| FSB |
| | 100/133(200/266)MHz clocks are supported. |
| Main Memory |
| | Supports six memory banks using three 184-pin DDR DIMMs
Supports a maximum memory size up to 3GB
Supports 2.5v DDR SDRAM DIMM |
| Slots |
| | One AGP slot
- AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) specification compliant
- Supports AGP 2.0 1x/2x/4x
One CNR (Communication Network Riser) slot
Five 32-bit Master PCI Bus slots
Supports 3.3V/5V PCI bus Interface |
| On-Board IDE |
| | An IDE controller on the VIA® VT8233 chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA 33/66/100 operation modes
Can connect up to 4 IDE devices |
| Audio |
| | Chip integrated (2 channel S/W audio)
- Direct Sound AC97 Audio |
| On-Board Peripherals |
| | On-Board Peripherals include:
- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
- 2 serial ports (COMA + COMB)
- 1 parallel port supporting SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 1 IrDA connector for SIR/ASKIR/HPSIR
- 1 Audio/Game port
- 1 D-Bracket™ header |
| BIOS |
| | The mainboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.
The mainboard provides a Desktop Management Interface (DMI) function which records your mainboard specifications. |
| Dimension |
| | 30.4 cm(L) x 23.5 cm(W)ATX Form Factor |
| Mounting |
| | 6 mounting holes. |
| Special Functions |
| | USB Interface
-- K7T266 Pro2-RU: 4 USB 2.0 ports, 4 USB 1.1 ports
-- K7T266 Pro2: 6 USB 1.1 ports
Note : USB2.0 driver is provided by Microsoft Win2000 and WinXP service pack.
Before you start to download, make sure you are using motherboard with NEC USB2.0 Host Controller.
1. Install Win2K first and access to the Internet.
2. Click the "Start" item and move your mouse to "Windows Update" (The first item in the Start manu)
3. Click Windows Update ( windowsupdate.microsoft.com)
4. Find a column called " Product Updates", and click it
During this moment, the screen will show a dialogue asking you to wait ( Microsoft is detecting all hardware devices on your
board now)
5. Then A column shows "Device Drivers". Under it is a Microsoft-- USB controller. Download this one.
6. DONE
|
Alright. Now that we've appeased all you tech heads on exactly what this board does, doesn't do, supports and does not support. Lets get into some basic stuff on this board.
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