Thursday, January 04, 2001

Additional features

Additional features of the ECS K7VZA include: Wake on LAN, Wake on Modem Ring, PS2 connectors, 2 USB ports on the rear panel and two on the board, Suspend to RAM, RX/TX connectors for infrared communication, and start-up from the mouse, keyboard, or at a pre-set time. Hardware monitoring of fan speeds, CPU temperature, and of voltages is also included with this PC99-compliant motherboard. An AC"97 sound-card controlled by the VIA 686A Southbridge is also included.

Below, a photo of the ECS K7VZA.

Click here for a larger image

Installation

Installation of ECS' K7VZA is pretty easy. Simply put the board in a case, plug it in, verify all your accessories are set-up, boot-up, and make a jump into the BIOS to make any adjustments.

The software bundle

The installation CD includes the VIA 4-in-1 drivers v4.23, and drivers for the sound-card. A few utilities are also included, namely PC Cillin, Garnut, and Super-Voice.

The hardware bundle

The ECS K7VZA also comes with an 80-pin ATA66 cable, a floppy drive connector, and a network connector support for the rear panel.

Next: The Tests

K7VZA is a ATX mainboard that uses a 4-layer printed circuit board and measures 305 mm x 220 mm. The mainboard has a Socket 462 to accommodate AMD® Athlon (K7) processors that support frontside bus (FSB) speeds up to 200 MHz. The K7VZA is installed with the VT8363 (NB)/ VT82C686A (SB) chipset and built-in 3D sound that features the AC 97 audio codec. The mainboard delivers high-level performance with a 4xAGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot and two PCI Bus Master Ultra DMA (UDMA) ports that support up to four ATAPI (AT Attachment Packet Interface) devices. The PCI IDE also supports PIO Mode 3 and 4, UDMA33/66 IDE, and an ATAPI CD-ROM. The mainboard accommodates PC 100/133 SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) or VCM (Virtual Channel Memory) up to 1.5 GB using three 3.3V unbuffered DIMM modules. The mainboard attains the highest reliability by supporting ECC (Error Checking and Correction) memory protection, enabling the mainboard to achieve superior data integrity and fault-tolerance with respect to memory errors while running applications. Other features include a built-in PCI 3D sound system that supports the AC 97 audio codec. The mainboard has a full set of I/O ports, such as dual channel PCI EIDE interfaces, a floppy controller, two FIFO serial port connectors, an EPP/ECP-capable bi-directional parallel port connector, a dual USB (Universal Serial Bus) connector, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors. One AGP slot, five PCI local bus slots and an audio modem riser (AMR) slot provide expandability for add-on peripheral cards.

PROCESSORS

AMD® Athlon (K7) processors Full series of Athlon processors including the newest Duron and Thunderbird processors. (Can support the future 1.5GHz Thunderbird)

CHIPSET

VIA® VT8363 (NB) & VT82C686A (SB) Support AGP 2.0 specification (4X) Super I/O - Integrated in VT82C686A (SB) System Hardware Monitor: Integrated in VT82C686A (SB) AC97 Audio Codec: Avance ALC100 (RealTek) Compliant with AC97 2.1 specification

MEMORY

Three 168-pin DIMMs sockets for 3.3V SDRAM (Ready for PC100, PC133) Maximum: 1.5GB

SYSTEM BIOS

Award 2MB Flash EEPROM Supports Plug and Play 1.0A, AMP 1.2, Multi Boot, DMI Full Support for ACPI revision 1.0 specification

I/O INTERFACE

Supports Plug and Play function PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse connectors Four USB Ports (Two USB Connectors as header onboard) One - EPP/ECP mode parallel port Two - 16550 high-speed serial I/O ports Audio Ports (Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in, CD-in and game port) Dual PCI IDE interfaces - support four IDE devices (PIO mode 4, DMA Mode 2, Ultra DMA 33/66) Supports 360K~2.88M Byte, 3 Mode FDDs or LS120 ATX Power Supply Connector ports, Headers and Others: IrDA header Extra USB Header Green, HDD, Power indicator LED headers CPU and Case Fan headers LAN Card Wake Up / Modem Ring Wake-Up headers

RTC & BATTERY

VT82C686A included 256 bytes of CMOS SRAM With CMOS SRAM hardware clear jumper

EXPANSION SLOTS

5 PCI slots, 1 AGP slot, 1 AMR slot

FORM FACTOR

ATX (304mm*220mm)