MSI K7T266 Pro2-RU

MSI's K7T266 Pro2 is the latest motherboard to use VIA's improved Apollo KT266A chipset. We tested the fully packed K7T266 Pro2-RU with Raid and USB 2.0 controllers.

The motherboard supports Duron, Athlon or Athlon XP processors and there's plenty of room for a large heat sink. There's one AGP 4X, one CNR and five PCI slots, while the three Dimm slots accept up to 3Gb of unregistered DDR memory. The Eide controller supports four UltraDMA33, 66 or 100 drives, and there are basic AC97 stereo audio capabilities.

The standard port block offers two serial, two USB 1.1, two PS/2, one parallel, along with the audio and joystick connectors. There's also a neat set of LEDs that help diagnose start-up problems.

The onboard Promise Raid controller supports four more hard disks and Raid 0 or 1.There's also a USB SmartKey, which can be used to prevent unauthorised access. More exciting is the onboard USB 2.0 controller (currently only for Windows 2000/XP), which supports new Hi-Speed USB peripherals (up to 480Mbits/sec), and older USB 1.1 (12Mbits/sec) devices.

There are two blanking plates, one with four USB 2.0 ports and the other with two USB 1.1 ports, plus a repeat of the diagnostic LED block. That's eight ports, but potentially two slots blocked on your case - front-mounted ports in a drive bay may have been preferable.

We fitted an Athlon XP 1800+, 256Mb DDR 2100, GeForce3 and a Seagate Barracuda II disk. Under XP with nVidia's Detonator XP driver, it scored 180 in SYSmark 2001, performed our 3D render in 15 minutes 22 seconds, the Seti task in five minutes 55 seconds, and delivered 136.7fps in Q3A at 32bit SXGA.

MSI's FuzzyLogic utility offers basic over-clocking facilities, but enthusiasts will prefer the power of Abit's SoftMenu on its KG7. Running around four per cent faster than the KG7, though, MSI's K7T266 Pro2-RU is a great board with excellent connectivity options.

PRICE: £152.75 (£130 ex VAT)

CONTACT: Micro Direct
0161 248 5050
www.msi.com.tw

See also:

Abit AT7 Max2 and IT7 Max2

A further step towards the legacy-free PC.  10 Feb 2003

Hewlett Packard Netserver E800

HP serves PIII for SME - a network server for the small business.  16 May 2001

Abit Motherboard KT7-RAID

A motherboard that makes the most of a Socket A processor.  02 Jan 2001

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