ASUS A7V

The Asus A7V leaves nothing to be desired as far as features are concerned,

and this is reflected in its score of 98.5 out of 100 in features. It can

accommodate the Socket A Athlon or Duron processors from AMD. The board is laid

out on an ATX form factor and all the connectors are onboard and color-coded.

All the slots on the board are also clearly marked, which makes it a breeze to

install. It has four IDE connectors out of which two are for ATA/66 and the

other two for the latest ATA/100 drives. All motherboard settings can be done

from the BIOS in jumperfree mode, or through the DIP switches on the board. All

expansion needs are taken care of by the five PCI slots and an AMR slot. The A7V

also has a 4X AGP slot which can take in the latest graphics cards available in

the market. The three DIMM slots on the board can together take in a maximum of

1.5 GB of RAM, which should surely be more than sufficient for all types of

work. There are two USB ports on the board and an additional USB header that can

provide three more USB ports with an add-on card that is provided. The manuals

that came with the board too, were as good as ever with ASUS, leaving no topic

uncovered.

On the performance front, too, the A7V is extremely good. It got an overall

score of 98.5, which is great. In Indy3D the board got score of 45.6, which was

the highest for all Athlon boards. Again, the average frame rate of 105 in Quake

III Arena meant that it scored as high as the Asus A7 Pro. In Business

Winstone99 also it grabbed the top spot with a score of 32.1. In all other

benchmarks also the board did very well. So if you are looking for a board that

performs then there are a few better than the Asus A7V.

What made the A7V lose the first spot is its price. A hefty price tag of

Rs13,000 made it the most expensive board in our shootout. Against the Azza

KT133 TX, which gives an almost equal performance and has a price tag of Rs

5,192, the A7V stood no chance.