Mercury KOB KT266a FDSX

Here’s a well performing and inexpensive socket A motherboard for AMD processors. Meant for home and office use, this AT form factor board is similar to the KM266 FDSMx motherboard, but does not have on-board video. It supports both DDR and SDRAM with a maximum capacity of 2GB. For expansion there are five PCI, two serial, and one CNR slots. But, it has only two USB ports. Based on the Via KT266A chipset, it has on-board AC97 audio and supports ATA 133 interface for hard-disk drives.

On the performance front, it faired slightly lower than the KOB 266 FDSMx; but, for normal use, that difference does not matter very much. It is also priced slightly lower. Another difference between the two boards is that with the KOB KM266a FDSX, you can add many PCI cards (modem, network card, TV tuner card), while with the KOB 266 FDSMx you can’t as it has only two PCI slots.

Anoop Mangla