I was very impressed with this board and how far I was able to push the FSB. I dropped the multiplier to 6 using the DIP switch, and I overclocked the default 100Mhz FSB all the way up to 160Mhz! After trying some different multiplier and FSB settings I achieved a speed of 990Mhz. The system would boot at 166, but it locked up while running 3Dmark2001SE. If I had some better RAM I am sure I would have been able to get it higher.
I ran SiSoft Sandra Pro 2002.1.8.59 and benchmarked the CPU, Multimedia, and memory bandwidth again. As you can see there is a huge increase in the CPU, and multimedia benchmark and the memory bandwidth is a lot higher than the default setting.
Even though the motherboard only has a Duron 700Mhz CPU in it, when it’s overclocked to 990Mhz with a FSB of 160Mhz the results for 3DMark2000 are really good.
3DMark2001SE also has a much better score when overclocked, the only reason that it is a little low is because it’s a Duron.
Quake 3 results are great, even at 1600×1200 with all the eye candy turned on I still got 84.3 FPS. Every other resolution I tested at got over 100 FPS.
Serious Sam benchmarking proved to stress the system more than Quake 3. At 1600×1200 I got 37.7 FPS which is a little low but with all the other resolutions below that the FPS are very good and it would not look choppy at all.
Conclusion
I really like this board a lot, the AK77 Pro(A)-133 has a lot of great features and is a good board for overclocking. I really like the design and layout of the board, I also really like the black PCB. The only thing I would change is the position of the ATX plug which they have done on the KT333 model. I really like the fact that it is able to handle such a high FSB.
The only thing I did not really like about this board is that there are DIP switches, and there should be more memory tweaking options as well as a VDIMM adjustment which would also help in getting a higher FSB. Even though the KT333 chipset is already out this board can still hang with the big boys, with good RAM and a good CPU I’m sure that it could perform as well as a KT333 board.
If you want a great socket A, KT266a board you cannot go wrong with this one. I would like to again thank AOpen for sending me this board to review.
Pros
- Great overclocker
- High FSB options
- Good price
- Cool looking black PCB
- The board is very well laid out
- Has ATA133 support
- Lots of room around the socket
- Onboard PC speaker
Cons
- DIP switches
- CNR slot
- No VDIMM adjustments
- Not enough memory tweaking options
