Thursday, August 16, 2001

Introduction

Biostar, a company who's products only recently hit our lab, has presented us with their latest KT133A board. The M7VKD is a thus a Socket A board designed to support PC133 memory and ATA100 drives. Clearly, this is a product destined for the mid-range market, though it makes a number of concessions in terms of functionality but it offers an ISA slot. So, with all that said, let's get down to the review.

Configuration

Unlike most KT133A boards currently on the market, the M7VKD possesses few Overclocking features, and a number of jumpers.

Jumpers JCK1 and JCK2, for their part, serve to force the FSB to either 100MHz or 133MHz.

On the other hand, there are no jumpers or BIOS functions available that would allow users to change the clock multiplier, or the Vcore and Vio voltages.

To change the FSB frequency from within the BIOS, users should access the "Frequency/Voltage Control" menu.

A number of memory timing options can be changed, however, from within the "Advanced Chipset Features" menu. These include the ability to alter memory latency, set the memory bus speed to 100MHz or 133MHz, and a number of other functions that users have come to expect over the years. Unfortunately, this does not include the ability to set the memory bank interleave - something that is quite contrary to other KT133A products.

Next: Technical details.