Last week we tested a DDR enabled mobo for AMD Thunderbird from DFI. AK76-SN is based on AMD761 while a lot of DDR motherboards on the market are based on the VIA266 chipset. People were disappointed about VIA266 performance on particular boards from the world's most respected manufacturers. Most editors tried to tweak the motherboards helped by manufacturer's support engineers and they really succeeded in one way or another. These tweaks implied hardware mods not BIOS optimizations as stated by many advertising people who wanted to sell the motherboards already launched on the market. We had the chance to tests several mobos two months ago and the results were devastating (the same performance or even poorer than a KT133A board). We also had several problems under Windows 2000 SP1, so it was a little hard for us to review such a motherboard and conclude about the chipset and implementation. Two weeks ago in our lab entered a motherboard which was the subject of several annoying disputes (at least on the web): MSI K7T266 Pro-R. I remember that many websites didn't recommend the purchase of K7T266 Pro due to mediocre performance and MSI confusion regarding the problems of this motherboard. MSI quietly shipped a new version of K7T266 Pro-R very fast and we wanted to see how this new version performs in benchmarks.

First look

From the first look anyone can see that the mobo is build with high-quality in mind. The package speaks for quality: two IDE cables, a floppy cable, a CD with drivers and utils, one well documented motherboard users guide, one Promise RAID users manual, one Promise drivers floppy disk, two set of USB brackets. We should not forget the motherboard itself which is average sized (30.4cm x 23.5cm) but which also looks impressive: one CNR, five PCI, one AGP Pro slot and four IDE headers. K7T266 Pro-R supports RAID mode 0 and 1 using the well known Promise 20265R chip. The ATX connector is placed close to the CPU but not so close to cause problems in a normal setup. Near the CPU socket there are five large 4700uF capacitors which should do a good job in overclocking conditions. I was not very satisfied about their position because although they do not make the insertion of a large cooler impossible they surely make harder the removal of firm attached coolers like Taisol. Around the socket there is plenty of space for large coolers but it's somehow harder to play with them (most coolers have the retention mechanism near the capacitors) so you have to take care when playing with the screwdriver :). K7T266 Pro-R comes with the same Diagnostic Led like the older motherboards reviewed at PC Hardware which is positive because it allows inexperienced users to track system problems prior to mailing or calling support. I liked that the motherboard supports USB 2.0, but I am a little bit skeptical about VIA's implementation because we have experienced several incompatibilities in our USB 2.0 tests early this year. We ran several USB tests with K7T266 Pro-R and the board succeeded to pass them but I do not exclude further incompatibilities due to manufacturers tendency to play around the standards. MSI used a very nice gold like heatsink and thermal paste to cool down the VT8233 chipset. A special appreciation must go to the three memory slots which support 2.5V DDR memory for a total of 3Gb of RAM.

MSI K7T266 Pro-R product picture

There are no many jumpers onboard so the CPU setup is user friendly. The USB ports support the new feature PC2PC from MSI for connecting two PCs without the need of a network card using the fast USB controller. You can find also onboard sound build into K7T266 Pro-R but if you want serious quality you would better buy a PCI card.