ASUS A7V133 Socket-A KT133A ATX

AnandTech Motherboard Rating

Performance

The A7V133 comes out to be the fastest KT133A solution so far, holding a 5% lead in Quake 3 Arena while staying close on the other tests. 

Price

Surprisingly, what used to be the weak point for ASUS, the price of the A7V133 is not particularly high.  At around $160 , the A7V133 is just slightly above average.  Considering the features and the quality of products you’re getting, it’s definitely worth it.

Stability

We used to run the stability tests for 24 hours, but last time we had to run for 48 hours before we finally gave up on the MSI K7T Turbo crashing.  This time around we also ran for 48 hours to prove that the A7V133 is just as stable as the K7T Turbo.  There is no doubt the A7V133 is an incredibly stable motherboard.

Quality

ASUS has a long history of product quality, and that’s still the case with the A7V133.  ASUS choose to put high quality components on the motherboard even though that increases the price a little bit. 

Features

The migration from dipswitches to a totally JumperFree setup makes overclocking a much more pleasant job, and the addition of RAID 0 on the Promise controller is nice.  However, the lack of RAID 1 support makes the controller seem half complete, even though RAID 0 is likely the more popular configuration. 

Layout

The layout of the board is a bit above average.  The design around the CPU socket is excellent, since there are no obstacles blocking the airflow around the socket.  The DIMM slots are far away enough from the AGP slot that the clips are not blocked by a graphics card.

However, the placement of the IDE connectors provided by the Promise controller might block the use of some longer AGP and PCI devices. 

Availability

ASUS products are probably one of the most commonly found product, both online and locally.  Most of them have competitive prices so you should be able to find one fairly quickly

Documentation & Software Bundle

Documentation is simply excellent.  You will be able to find every piece of information you need about the motherboard in the manual, and there is even a glossary at the back, making the manual more like a dictionary.  Of course, CD also includes all the software and drivers you need for the motherboard.