Any experiences with KM266?

time

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In particular, Gigabyte GA-7VKML. There's also Shuttle and ECS boards kicking around with this chipset.

It appears to be KT266A with integrated Savage 8 :roll: graphics.

I'm also curious about low-cost nForce 1 implementations such as Asus A7N266-VM. I saw one review that suggested stability on this particular board was not perfect ...
 

timwhit

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time said:
In particular, Gigabyte GA-7VKML. There's also Shuttle and ECS boards kicking around with this chipset.

It appears to be KT266A with integrated Savage 8 :roll: graphics.

I'm also curious about low-cost nForce 1 implementations such as Asus A7N266-VM. I saw one review that suggested stability on this particular board was not perfect ...

I have used the Asus A7N266-VM for about 6 systems now. I have had nothing but the best of luck with it. I can buy it for $70 and it comes with integrated grachics, lan, and sound. Plus it has optical and coaxial digital audio outputs. Installation is a snap.
 

NRG = mc²

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My Shuttle had the KM266. Wasn't any good graphics wise, but it did its job fine.
 

Buck

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time said:
I'm also curious about low-cost nForce 1 implementations such as Asus A7N266-VM. I saw one review that suggested stability on this particular board was not perfect ...

I've had good success with this chipset too. For the price, features and good performance, it is worth the money. My only caveat to this is that I'd rather run a separate video card then the onboard card. ATI 7000s and 9000s work well with this board.
 

Mercutio

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I've used a Biostar KM266 board a couple of times. They're generally well-behaved and very reasonably priced.
 

timwhit

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Buck said:
time said:
I'm also curious about low-cost nForce 1 implementations such as Asus A7N266-VM. I saw one review that suggested stability on this particular board was not perfect ...

I've had good success with this chipset too. For the price, features and good performance, it is worth the money. My only caveat to this is that I'd rather run a separate video card then the onboard card. ATI 7000s and 9000s work well with this board.

I've never had any problem with the video on this board. I haven't used in on any super high-end monitors. But, it looks fine on midrange 17" monitors. I never tried any games though.
 

Buck

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I wouldn't say the onboard video is a problem (it certainly performs better then any other onboard video before its time), but I prefer the extra power of newer video cards on that board.
 

Tea

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Yeah. We've tried them. At first we thought "Wow! What a bargain!" But they haven't been entirely trouble-free by any means. We bought 5, sold all or most of them, bought another five the other day. Tannin likes them because they are cheap, have an AGP slot, are a decent brand, and have (so he's told) good sound and video.

Kristi doesn't like them. She says the drivers don't work: you have to install every damn thing one bit at a time, and there are a million different drivers to load. Takes forever. And they don't always work. One day last week he had to do a motherboard change because whenever she loaded the drivers the thing would start playing up. Tried clean installs, swapped the RAM, everything. Gave up and put a VIA board in in the end - the customer was picking up any minute now - and scrounged around for a crappy ATI 8MB video card to put in the substitute board.

Only time I've done one it just worked first time: integrated install routine and everything. But maybe I just got lucky. We will have to wait and see how this second batch of five go. If Kristi's still complaining, we will switch back to VIA-based boards. Have to keep Kristi happy.

On the whole, I'm torn: I like the no-fuss, plug in and work first time, every time that VIA boards give you, but I don't like their under-spec graphics chips. And the first time, every time rule really only applies to the ones that don't have crappy integrated video. If I just want it to work, I use a KT-266A (or an AMD 760) and a Nvidia video card.

VIA chipset, Nvidia video board. Best combination around.
 

Tea

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Sorry. The ASUS. If Kristi doesn't decide that they are OK after all, we'll try the Gigabyte one instead. Or an Albatron one. In the end, simple familiarity is such a huge bonus: we have worked on so many VIA boards over the years that I guess we tend to just get them right by reflex now. With other brands, you have to think. (Which iz OK for me and Kristi, but Tannin and the Soup Nazi find this though ztuff a bit of a strain.)

Also, whenever we start doing other chipsets, zooner or later we forget and load the VIA drivers onto them, zame as usual. That can get quite interesting at times!
 

Buck

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What operating systems was Kristi using with those Asus boards? As you probably know, I use Windows XP or Windows 2000. Both have proven flawless with the board. Just run through the OS install, stick in the Asus driver CD, and you're done.

The board has been a fuss when one customer was upgrading from an older Slot-1 solution to a newer AMD solution under Windows 98. Windows 98 wasn't happy with the upgrade and kept giving errors in device manager. I eventually went with the Gigabyte GA-7DXE (AMD 761 AGPset, VIA 686B Southbridge) and all was well. Nonetheless, when it comes to new installs (Windows 98 or not), everything works really good.

I also like the mATX size of the board.
 

timwhit

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Buck said:
What operating systems was Kristi using with those Asus boards? As you probably know, I use Windows XP or Windows 2000. Both have proven flawless with the board. Just run through the OS install, stick in the Asus driver CD, and you're done.

That's exactly what I'm saying. The easiest install ever.
 

powergyoza

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I built a machine for a friend using that mobo. No problems, but the 2D video display quality is the worst I've seen. The Asus A7N266 has better video img quality, but after using a Matrox G550, nothing compares for img quality or more importantly, consistency of quality.
 

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Tea said:
(Which iz OK for me and Kristi, but Tannin and the Soup Nazi find this though ztuff a bit of a strain.)
Where's the Grammar Police when we need it?


...and I would take the Asus a7n266-vm over any KM266-based board any day.
 

time

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I notice that Digit Life compared these boards when they reviewed the Intel 845G chipset (i.e. the Gigabyte GA-7VKML and a Leadtek implementation of nForce 420).

(Caution - the benchmark page of that review causes both Opera and Mozilla to hang on my PC.)

The results confirmed what I'd seen elsewhere about the Shuttle board: VM266 has rotten performance - and not just with the integrated graphics, which being a Savage core, we'd expect to suck.

Given that I was considering this particularly for slower CPUs, it would be an unfortunate combination. :(
 
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