Overclocker Cafe - AOpen AK77-333 Mainboard Review

AOpen AK77-333 (KT333) Mainboard

Manufacturer: AOpen
Supplied by: AOpen
Price: ~$120.00

By Dean Barker (5/18/2002)

Introduction

VIA released the KT333 chipset in February of this year. As with the advent of any new chipset, the expectation is for large leaps in performance from the previous standard. This is both true and untrue in regards to the KT333 chipset. The KT333 is basically the KT266A with official support for DDR333 (PC2700). The thing about this is that the KT333 is offering “official” support for a still “unofficial” standard. The new KT333 could have just as easily been named the KT266B. Anyway you cut it, there is new technology to be had with the KT333. Let’s see how well AOpen gets the rubber to the road with their version of the KT333 chipset in the form of the AK77-333 mainboard. We wish to extend our thanks to the good folks at AOpen for providing us a review sample.

What you get

It appears that the brightly colored orange and blue box is out and a new sea green and blue is in. AOpen left the window in the top of the box to show off their almost signature black PCB board.

Included with the board is one ATA-133 (yellow), an ATA-66/100 (black) as well as a black floppy drive ribbon cable. The AOpen design team must all be case modders why else pay attention to the aesthetics of the ribbon cable color. I like it!

Also included is a bracket with two additional USB ports, driver / utility disk, a copy of Norton Anti-Virus 2002, fold out installation poster, and manual. The manual is thorough and easily understandable. The installation poster that AOpen includes with their boards is outstanding. It is a quick and dirty what you need to know on how to install and set up the board. This is an idea I'm surprised other board makers haven't caught on to. On the driver disk is a hardware monitoring utility to keep tabs on temperatures and voltages, which is nice to know.

Specifications

Let’s take a look at the white paper.

CPU: AMD Athlon / XP (Socket A), AMD Duron (Socket A)
Chipset: VIA KT333 / VT8233A AGPset
Architecture: 1 CNR slot + 5 PCI slots +1 AGP slot
Max. Main Memory: Max. 3GB DDR333/266 SDRAM for 184pin DIMM*3
DIMM Type: 64/128/256/512 MB/1GB
On Board USB: VIA USB controller onboard -4 USB v 2.0 ports, 4 USB v1.1 ports
On Board Sound: Realtek AC’97 CODEC on board (5.1 channel)
2 Serial Ports (UART 16C550 Support)
1 Parallel Port (SPP/EPP/ECP Support)
2 Channel E-IDE (Mode 4 and Bus master Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 Support)
1 Floppy Drive Connector (1.2/1.44/2.88MB)
2 Universal Serial Bus Ports (V1.1)
1 PS/2 Mouse Port
1 PS/2 Keyboard Port
Game/Midi Port, Speaker-Out, Line-In, Mic-In
Onboard Connector: CD-In, AUX-in, Front Audio, IrDA, Wake-On-Modem , Wake-On-LAN, CPU Fan, Chassis Fan, Fan2 , Additional 2 USB V1.1 Ports, 4 USB V2.0 Ports (optional), Dr. LED , Chassis intrusion connector, SPDIF
BIOS: Award Plug and Play 2Mb Flash ROM BIOS
Board Size: 244mm x 305mm, ATX Form Factor
BIOS upgrade under windows environment