facebook rss twitter

Review: ASUS A7V8X

by David Ross on 27 November 2002, 00:00

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), VIA Technologies (TPE:2388)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaom

Add to My Vault: x

Specification

Processor

Every AMD Socket A processor, from the Duron 600 to Athlon XP 2800+

Chipset

VIA KT400 Socket A North Bridge and VT8235 South Bridge
AGP 3.0 compliancy with 1x,2x,4x,8x support

IDE Controllers

Supports UDMA 33, 66, 100, 133 transfer modes
RAID 0/1/0+1 via Promise 20376 Controller
Dual Serial ATA Channels supporting speeds up to 150 MB/sec

Memory

Three 184 pin DIMM sockets for Un-buffered & Non ECC DDR DRAM
Maximum of 1 module for DDR 400 support (1GB Maximum)
Maximum of 2 modules for DDR 333 support (2GB Maximum)
Maximum of 3 modules for DDR 200/266 support (3GB Maximum)

BIOS

ASUS Jumperfree setup
Award PnP BIOS, DMI 2.0
ACPI (Advanced Configuration Power Interface)
ASUS EZ Flash
ASUS Mylogo2
Multilingual

Onboard Audio

Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio
Digital audio out supporting 24-bit SPDIF

Onboard LAN

Broadcom 10/100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet Controller

I/O Connectors

AGP, 6 PCI slots
Floppy port
3 x IDE connectors
2x Serial ATA 150 connectors
2x USB Header, 2x IEEE 1349a header
1x CD-in, 1x Aux-in
1x Gameport header

Back Panel

1x Parallel, 2x Serial
PS/2 Keyboard and mouse
4x USB
Front speaker, line in, Mic in, Center/Sub, Surround Speaker jacks
2x USB, 1x RJ-45 LAN

Extra back panels

2x Firewire (IEEE 1394)
SPDIF I/O
Game port
2x USB

The board also has headers to add the ASUS I-panel or a smart card reader:

Ā 

There are plenty of IDE drive options, with 2 normal UDMA 133 channels, a RAID-able channel and a further 2 Serial ATA channels you can fully load the system with all sorts of drives. The Serial ATA ports have limited use at the moment as there are hardly any drives available that support the new interface, but it's nice to know that when the drives do come out the ports are there.