"Aboard the board..."

Let's take a look at the specs.

Everything is in place..

And now a few comments. Surely, there is no board with a perfect layout. Luckily, we haven't had much trouble with MSI in the past, nor now. The PSU connector could have gone besides the DIMM Slots, but the original place is also fine. What isn't fine however is the distance between the AGP Pro slot and the DIMM slots, as you have to take out your AGP card (supposing it's not one of the shortest types) before you can add/remove memory modules. This is getting quite standard at MSI, at least this was the case with all MSI boards we have tested lately. Capacitors are arranged extremely well, there are only 5 of them, but each one carries a 4700uF sign - sign of stability (if everything else is done as it should be). The board is equipped with three fan headers, which it quite enough. The rotated CPU socket is a nice move in our opinion, not to mention the usable little clips for the heatsink on the inner side of this socket (say, are we picky or what? ). We miss the good ol' ISA slot, which would be preferred instead of the rarely used AMR/CNR/ACR solutions. Like the K7T Turbo-R, this board didn't work with our keyboard and mouse cable lengthener, which is only a minor minus and probably only for us (we ARE picky!). Anyway, our cable isn't properly shielded, so let's forget this flaw altogether. Yes, D-Led is supported by the K7T266 Pro, although D-Bracket is the cool thing to have as the color signals of D-Bracket can also be seen with a closed case. But let's be fair, "even" D-Led is something extra compared to most boards out there.

5 * 4700 = Stability

There exists a light version of this very board (just seen a bunch at CHS Hungary) with no Promise RAID controller, PC2PC support and AGP Pro slot. Fortunately, we had the full version. Well, actually not as full as it could have been, as the USB 2.0 controller with +4 USB 2.0 ports was missing. Everything was there, it was just the NEC USB 2.0 chip that wasn't. We praised the integrated CMI HRTF 4.1 Sound chip in our Iwill KK266 review - here, we would rather not comment on the integrated AC'97 CODEC as it is simply horrible. Really. But this has nothing to do with MSI, it is right there in the VIA Super South Bridge. "Bonus", I guess...

PC2PC is a real bonus, on the other hand. With this neat little feature we can connect two MSI board through their USB ports with an USB cable and emulate a load of network functions - without LAN cards and HUBs/Switches! Practical it is, now all we need is two MSI boards to try it out with (actually, it is said that only one of the boards needs to be manufactured by MSI, but this doesn't sound to logical... we will experiment with it, but seriously doubt this rumour).

To our greatest surprise the K7T266 Pro didn't come with the Award BIOS that everyone is used to, rather than the blueish-grayish style BIOS from AMI. This BIOS implementation can be recommended just as much as Award's, as it is perfectly comfortable and usable. All overclocking features are incorporated in the Setup (VCore and DIMM voltages, multiplier adjustments and 1MHz FSB scaling), beneath the Hardware Monitoring menu, which was - at least to us - somewhat surprising. But we got used to it quickly. The board also allows you to set a critical temperature for the CPU and should (I am saying should, because we didn't dare try this) shut down the system if the CPU reaches that temperature. This is a very much needed feature in case of AMD Athlon/Duron processors as they do NOT incorporate any sort of thermal protection, unlike the Intel parts. And suppose we want to build an AMD based server which runs night and day and has a heatsink fan that will die sooner or later (they all do)... well, now you see what I am talking about.

"Now what does that Ultra setting mean..?

"More, more!.."

Let us still stay with the BIOS for a little longer: memory timings. It is safe to say that this is the most critical section of the Setup as these settings are in direct correlation with overall performance. CAS Latency is to be set here, naturally, to the lowest value the system can handle 100% stable (CAS 2, CAS 2.5). Then there is a parameter regarding system performance, which screams for the "Ultra" setting. The option for 4-Way Interleaving is also there, so use it if you can. And finally, there is a mysterious choice called SDRAM 1T Command (which forces the memory controller into a single clock rhytm ). All in all, the AMI BIOS proved to be absolutely functional, even if it isn't the almighty standard itself. We were granted the entertainment of setting critical options, but we weren't left with a zillion of unknown choices to make. A+ for the System Setup.

A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!