BIOS and Ocing

USB

As we said before, the two A7N boards are essentially identical except for the chip change. The A7N266-C sports a total of six USB ports. Two reside at the back of the board in their usual spots; the other four require the use of a connector. We were a little stunned when we saw what ASUS had provided. It seems as though the connector that is provided has a reserve power of its own – note the capacitors on the riser card. Most other manufacturers merely supply a cable that connects it to the board. While the standard USB port does supply power, not all USB devices are created equal. Some require a bit more juice in order to function. Alas, it seems at this benefit, we also get a loss. The board ships with support for six USB ports, but only enough connectors are given to run four of them. It’s still pretty rare for people to use this many USB devices, but it would have been nice if ASUS had provided for the remaining two ports.

Aluminum tower

I/O

BIOS Features

Once again, the two nForce boards are identical. In terms of overclocking features, the A7N266-C is the same as the E revison. The board supports bus speeds ranging from 100MHz-172MHz, you’re sure to find your sweet spot somewhere in there. Although, the board does not feature 1MHz increments, the 2MHz jumps should be just fine for most us.

We were a little disappointed by the fact that the core and RAM voltages could only be adjusted via jumpers. This isn’t a big problem, as you will have determined what voltages your system needs, and then never really have to touch the jumpers again. The CPU voltages can be adjusted from 1.675V up to 1.85V, in .025V increments. The DDR voltage can be changed from 2.5V to 2.7V via .1V increments.

In terms of RAM options, the board gives you the ability to adjust memory timings via a single drop down menu. We’re not to sure what their settings mean, but the standard 2T speed setting is there, along with a somewhat cryptic “2T Turbo” RAM setting. We ran the tests with the Turbo enabled and everything seemed to go just peachy.

In the theme of this review, even our overclock was identical! We got our 1800+ up to a not so glorious 1.64GHz, up 100MHz from default. We have determined this to be the limit for this CPU, as other boards have yielded essentially the same result.

AGP

The A7N has the relatively unused AGP Pro slot. This standard appeared quite a while ago, while companies have yet to start using it, it’s nice to know the slot is here and prepared for what the future may bring. The AGP slot also has a safety feature built into it. It prevents the use of older 3.3V AGP cards from damaging the motherboard. A little red LED next to the slot will light up in case this happens, and prevents the motherboard from booting up. Current AGP video cards run on 1.5V