Motherboard: MSI KT266 Pro2 Review :: Features

• Chipset NB: VIA KT266A chipset. (North-Bridge 552 BGA)
• Chipset SB: VT8233 (South-Bridge 376 BGA)
• FSB: 200/266MHz
• Memory: Three DIMM slots, up to 3GB of PC1600/PC2100 DDR SDRAM
• PCI Slots: Five 2.2 32-bit Master PCI bus slots.
• AGP: 4X
• CNR: Yes
• AMR: No
• Onboard Video: No
• Onboard Sound: AC97 Codec
• IDE Channels: Two ATA100 Compliant IDE controllers
• RAID: No
• Power Requirements: 300W AMD approved.
• BIOS: 2MB flash programmable Award BIOS
• Hardware Monitoring: Yes
• WOL(Wake On LAN): Yes
• WOK(Wake On Keyboard): Yes
• WOM(Wake On Mouse): Yes

CPU Compatibility

• AMD Athlon XP (Palomino, Socket A) 1900+
• AMD Athlon (Thunderbird, Socket A) 1.4GHz
• AMD Duron ( Socket A) 950MHz

On Board Peripherals

• 1 Floppy port supports 2 FDD with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes.
• 2 Serial ports (COM A + COM B), 1 Parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode.
• 1 IrDA connector for SIR/ASKIR/HPSIR
• 1 Audio/Game port.
• 8 USB 1.1 ports.

Available Models

• K7T 266 Pro2
• K7T 266 Pro2RU (VIA KT-266, Promise IDE RAID, NEC USB 2.0)

The most stand out things on the KT266 Pro2 are the massive amount of available USB ports, and the excellent layout of the board itself. These two things along with the outstanding overclocking options make the KT266 Pro2 a contender for the speed king crown.

MSI offers this motherboard in a few different flavors. The one that I received is their lowest priced and most featureless one of the two varieties they offer and still comes across as a quality motherboard. The system substructure is basically the same as the KT266 with the most noticeable difference being the color of the PCB which on the older board was the standard green PCB.

Even though it is the entry level board it still has a few shiny areas that make it a serious competitor for your consumer dollar. After all having a total of eight USB ports allows you to use your systems available resources without the additional cost of an external USB hub which is a cost saver in itself.

The original KT266 chipset was supposed to be the great new chipset from VIA but it failed to deliver the performance that looked so good on paper but failed to keep its promise when it hit the market. Since the design is basically the same as the KT266 was companies will be able to adapt their current product to the new KT266A chipset without any real R&D work having to be done to get it up and ready.

MSI also included their D-Bracket which is a replacement for their previous D-LED feature, which provides diagnostic LED's for the user to see during the boot sequence. On previous boards to tell if something was wrong with the video card or RAM a specific set of lights would still alert you to the problem but the case would have to be open to see them as they were located on the board itself. The D-Bracket brings these features to the back of the case allowing for immediate attention without having to open up your system. The D-Bracket also features two USB ports of its own as an added feature to the board.

The system memory has also been improved with reduced latency allowing for faster access times to the system and improved transfer rates between the systems bus. The amount of data in the memory's buffer which is frequently accessed by the CPU is now larger. What this means to you is that the system is now able to access and utilize the system memory in a better way than previously available. This frees up the CPU to work on other tasks and keep the system running faster with multiple applications being used concurrently.

This technology is part of the V-Link Hub architecture, a new feature that has been implemented in the latest release of VIA's chipsets, which is responsible for fast communication between the PCI bus and Southbridge's controller section. Overall this board has many features that will make it appealing to the consumer market and should be a big winner in this last quarter of 2001. The USB 2.0 feature available on their other boards is nice but in the now there are really no market ready products that take advantage of this feature.

The KT266 Pro2 is basically a supped up KT266 with improved features a new color and more USB ports. All in all they have done a good job here as I could find no serious design flaws that could make the board less user friendly and the board is made well. Like always the packaging on their products looks as good as it performs as you can see in the content photo. I have no complaints about this motherboard. It is not the most feature rich of their models but it still can hold its own in today's market.