Jasper van VIA Hardware.com heeft een review geschreven over het AK74-EC mobo van fabrikant DFI (dus niet de AK47 ). Het plankje beschikt over een KT133 chipset, 3x DIMM, 1x ISA, 5x PCI, 1x AGP en 1x AMR. Het enige verschil met de vorige versie, de DFI AK74-SC, is dat de southbridge een upgrade ondergaan heeft, waardoor nu ook ATA100 ondersteund wordt. Net als de eerdere versies ondersteunt dit AK74 bordje ook geen voltage tweaking en multiplieropties. De FSB is wel instelbaar in stappen van 1MHz van 100 tot 133MHz. Ondanks de stabiliteit is deze plank dus geen optie voor ons Tweakers. Het prijskaartje is gelukkig niet onaantrekkelijk:
The VIA 686b southbridge will certainly be welcomed into the market. ATA100 hard drives are readily available from IBM and Maxtor and for now is the current standard. As hard drives become faster, they will make the ATA100 standard that more important, as performance gains increase. Although ATA100 is a very nice option on a chipset, I don't read about too many BX users that are limited by the BX's ATA33. Nevertheless ATA100 is the new standard and now has full support from VIA and Intel. Another advantage of the VIA 686b southbridge is it should add little or no cost to current motherboard prices, since it simply can replace the 686a. This is a change from the Asus A7V and Abit KT7-RAID, which both use ATA100 integrated cards, and generally cost $30-$40 more then other KT133 motherboards.
The DFI AK74-EC performed flawlessly in all of my testing. Again, like the AK74-SC, I was very impressed with its stability. The addition of the VIA 686b southbridge should make this board and excellent setup for those not overclocking and are looking for a rock-solid platform for an AMD Duron/Athlon. The price also comes nicely at a pricetag of $115 via pricewatch. The downside of course is the lack of CPU multiplier adjustments and sub-A7V memory performance.
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