Anand lal Shimpi heeft deze maandag een review gepost van de Asus K7V-RM, een KX133 moederplaatje in MicroATX formaat. De meeste van ons zullen natuurlijk meer interesse hebben in de gewone K7V versie, de prestaties tussen de twee zullen als het goed is identiek zijn. Vanuit het Award Medallion (Phoenix) bios kun je een keuze maken uit 12 busspeeds, evenals kan daar de geïntegreede Crystal Logic CrystalClear SoundFusion CS4299 AC'97 geluidschip de nek om gedraaid worden. Verder blinkt dit Asus KX133 vooral uit in stabiliteit en is eventueel ook geschikt voor een 1GHz Athlon.
Until AMD introduces their 426-pin Socket-A interface for the future Athlon processors, all motherboard manufacturers will be producing Slot-A based motherboard designs. This obviously includes the K7V-RM whose cramped layout still finds room to house the 242-pin interface connector. Around the Slot-A connector we find a number of 1500uF, 680uF and even an oversized 4700uF capacitor that help keep a clean and reliable signal supplied to the power hungry Athlon processor.
The K7M was the first Athlon motherboard to offer any real options for the overclocker because it featured support for FSB settings between the default 100MHz and the current unofficial limit of the Athlon motherboard designs, 110MHz. While some users managed to hit above 110MHz, for the most part you can consider 110MHz to be the realistic maximum overclocked FSB setting on any current Athlon platform. The K7V-RM manages to offer quite a few useful FSB settings in its list of 12 frequencies selectable from within the board's BIOS setup. Those settings are: 90 / 92 / 95 / 97 / 100 / 101 / 103 / 105 / 107 / 110 / 112 and 115MHz.
The BIOS setup also allows you to set the DRAM to CPU frequency ratio as either 3:3 or 4:3, thus allowing you to run your memory at 133MHz while your FSB runs at 100MHz. In addition to FSB selection, the AWARD Medallion BIOS of the K7V-RM lets you manually adjust the core voltage of your CPU, making the board even more flexible for overclockers. Both the FSB selection and core voltage selection can be accomplished through jumpers and dip switches located on the motherboard itself.