Since we first reviewed the Asus A7M266, one of the first AMD760 based motherboards a few months back (see review here), a lot has happened. Many companies have released boards using this and other chipsets and DDR RAM has come down in price considerably. As a result of that, the DDR platform has become attractive to even price conscious buyers as the price differences to KT133A boards are small and the performance gains are fair.
And as you can now pick up an AMD Thunderbird 1.4 GHz for about $100 USD, you really get a lot of power for you money...
DFI DFI has been making hardware since 1981. It now produces motherboards for all current CPUs and is (they claim) one of the top 10 motherboard companies in the world. Probably mostly due to their large OEM production they produce more than 200k motherboards a month. It has, as most other motherboard manufacturers, its headquarters in Taiwan.
The package
Here is what I got with my board:
AK76-SN Motherboard
User's Manual
Floppy Ribbon Cable
ATA-66/100 Hard Drive Ribbon Cable
USB Cable
Support CD (with drivers and utilities)
ATA-33 Hard Drive Ribbon Cable
Your basic run-of-the-mill motherboard accessories so to speak. Nothing more, nothing less than expected... But nicely done anyhow.
Price The board has a recommended price of USD $119.99 and retails for about $105+ - check out Pricewatch for details - so it is very agressively priced in comparison to other AMD760 boards.
Well, it's time to get some more information on what the board consists of, so here are the specs...
Specifications
Chipset
AMD 761 / VIA 686B
CPU Socket
Socket A
CPU Supported
200/266 MHz Alpha EV6 FSB for AMD Athlon /Duron processor 600MHz~ 1.2GHz and faster
Memory
2 DDR DIMM sockets max. 2GB (unbuffered) or 4GB (registered) Supports PC200/266 and ECC DDR SDRAM
PCI IDE
Dual PIO mode 3/4 EIDE channels up to 4 IDE devices UltraDMA/100 transfer rate up to 100MB/sec
Super I/O
2 x NS16C550A compatible UARTs 1 x SPP/ECP/EPP parallel port
External Connectors
2 x USB, 2 x DB-9, 1 x DB-25, 1 x PS/2 keyboard, 1 x PS/2 mouse
Internal Connectors
2 x external USB, 1x IrDA, 2 x IDE, 1x Floppy, 1 x ATX power, 4 x fan, 1 x WOL, 1 x WOR
Power Management
ACPI and OS direct power management Wake-on event: RTC/Modem/LAN
Hardware Monitor
System, processor temperature, voltage and fan speed
