Azza KT 133 TX

The Azza KT 133 TX grabbed the top spot in the category of

high-end Athlon boards. Being a Socket A interface, the board can take an Athlon

or Duron processor. A major advantage that the board had over others in its

category was the price. This, along with a two-year warranty, helped it gain a

wide margin over the other two boards, which were priced above Rs 9,000. The

motherboard is designed on an ATX form factor and all the slots are well placed

and clearly marked. All ports are onboard and color-coded for easy

identification. The manual is also very useful and informative.

The board can take up to 1.5 GB RAM in its three DIMM slots,

which is more than enough. Expansion is also taken care of with five PCI slots.

An ISA slot has been thrown in for backward compatibility. An AMR slot takes

care of future audio/modem devices, and it also supports 4x AGP for high-end

graphics cards. Its weakest area in features was the number of USB ports and

support for UltraDMA 100. It had two built-in USB ports and a connector for two

more. However, no connector cable was provided for the extra ones.

Performance-wise, the Azza KT 133 TX got respectable scores

in all benchmarks, being a touch behind the other two boards in its category. In

High-End Winstone99, it scored 52.2, while the Asus A7 Pro–the highest scorer

in performance–managed 53.8. The difference in scores was higher in graphics

and gaming benchmarks. In Quake III Arena, it gave an average frame rate of 86

fps, whereas the other two boards managed 105. In 3DWinbench2000, it scored 77.8

fps compared to 88.4 for the Asus A7 Pro. Its overall performance score was 91.5

out of 100 as against 98.8 scored by the Asus A7 Pro.

All said, a good deal considering its lucrative price tag.