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Testing and Overclocking:
Config:
ASUS Geforce3 8200 Deluxe (det 12.90 drivers)
256mb Corsair XMS2400
Global Win WBK38
30gb 75GXP IBM HDD
Pioneer 16x DVD drive
Leadman 400w PSU

Overclocking is one area that Asus has always excelled in. The A7V266, as mentioned, has both dipswitch and BIOS options for those needing a little more performance from their systems. I was a bit lazy in not trying the dipswitches at all. The BIOS is so much easier so I just played in there. Firstly I setup memory timing to cas2 (from cas2.5), added the usual fastwrites, 4 way interleaving, and bumped the CPU from 10 x 133 to 10 x 150. No increase in voltage was needed to boot to windows and run through all the benchmarks I needed. Lowering the FSB and increasing the multiplier got me to a Maximum Overclock of 1600mhz from a 1.333 but not entirely stable. I then tried to see what max FSB I could achieve was. I reached 166 FSB cas 2.5 stable which is the same as my Asus CUV4X-D motherboard so it could be a limitation of the cards I'm using, not the board. Jim from Realtime Systems (who supplied the ram for this review) has been trying to get 1000 points from his Sisoft Sandra memory score lately so I tried to see if I could get there first. Try as I might the best I could get was 967 which is nothing to sneeze at at all. The elusive 1000 is close but not for this board yet. Just as I was finishing the review a new BIOS turned up from Asus but unfortunately I didn't get time to try it out.

I compared the board to an identically configured MSI KT266Pro I also have here for testing - review soon. First, 3DMark2001:

Sandra CPU / MultiMedia

Sandra Memory

Conclusion
This board is a great replacement to the very popular Asus A7M266. The KT266 chipset has matured very well and motherboard manufacturers have learnt how to implement it to fully use its features and increase stability and memory bandwidth . The 6 channel 5.1 Sound is an added bonus on this board and the V-Link technology from VIA has removed a known bottleneck in systems to give better bandwidth between the north and south bridges. Overall performance is extremely good and other than adding raid (and another CPU hehehehe) I wouldn't change anything on this board. With the good feature set and overclocking ability this board will become a favorite very quickly.

The board gets 4 / 5 Shrunken VooDoo Heads Award

Many thanks to Nathan from Cassa Australia (Official Asus Distributors) and Computer Alliance (my day job) for supplying the board. Also to Jim from Realtime for the Corsair PC2400 DDR ram.

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