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Someone
over at Chaintech must have the Midas Touch. Or, maybe
they have been watching too many Dr. Dre music videos.
Regardless, everything we've seen from Chaintech lately has
been heavily accented by gold. Companies like ASUS,
ABIT, MSI, and Gigabyte may have more corporate clout here
in the United States, but Chaintech claims to be the fastest
growing motherboard manufacturer in the world and is
obviously sparing
no expense to prove it. The "bling bling" began with
the A-GT61 GeForce4 Ti 4600 that
we reviewed back in May,
and it continues with the 7VJL KT333 motherboard - one in a
series of fully featured high-end boards in Chaintech's
Apogee line.
It has been
shown, to varying degrees, that VIA's KT333 chipset doesn't
offer a world of difference from the preceding KT266A.
Of course the reason for this lies in the Athlon's front
side bus. At 266MHz, the FSB is capable of
transferring a theoretical maximum of 2.1GB per second of
information. The 333MHz memory bus introduced with the
KT333 chipset exceeds that amount, transferring up to 2.7GB
per second. Simply put, the EV6 front side bus can't
keep pace with the faster memory bus, making it difficult
for motherboard manufacturers to build KT333 boards that
offer a discernable difference from their older
counterparts. Chaintech has distinguished the 7VJL by
incorporating VIA's VT8235 South Bridge with ATA-133 and USB
2.0 support. But that's only the beginning...
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Specifications of the Chaintech 7VJL
Motherboard |
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High-end KT333 With
All Of The Bells and Whistles |
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Special Features
Supports USB 2.0 through VT8235
Integrated 10/100Mbps LAN controller
CBOX Front Panel with USB connectivity
Round Floppy and IDE Cables
CPU
Socket 462 for Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron
Chipset
VIA KT333
AGP 4x
Support for PC1600/2100/2700 DDR SDRAM
FSB
266MHzFSB/333MHz
Memory Bus
Main Memory
Three, 184-pin sockets
Maximum memory size up to 3GB
Slots
One AGP 4X slot
Six PCI 2.2 32-bit Master PCI bus slots |
On-Board IDE
An IDE controller on the VIA 8235 chipset provides
IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA
66/100 operation modes
Can connect up to four IDE devices
Audio
C-Media 8738 six channel audio
On-Board Peripherals
1 Floppy port supports 2 FDD with 360K, 720K,
1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
2 Serial port (COM A), 1 Parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP
mode
6 USB 2.0 ports (2 rear and 4 front)
USB Interface
6x USB 2.0 ports
BIOS
The mainboard BIOS provides Award "Plug & Play" Flash
BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and
expansion cards of the board automatically
Dimension
ATX Form Factor
305mm x 230mm |
Below
is a list of the items that accompany the
Chaintech 7VJL
Motherboard
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2 - 40-pin 80 Conductor
UDMA 100 Round Ribbon Cable
1 - Floppy Round Ribbon Cable
1 - Support CD
1 - CBOX front panel
1 - Body Theater headphone
1 - User's manual
1 - Thiz Linux CD |
Setup and Installation:
Since the 7VJL
comes with a few more gadgets than the average KT333
motherboard, it takes some time to decide what to use and
what to set aside. The CBOX front panel is very useful
if you've got multiple USB devices that may not be in
constant use. For instance, an external USB 2.0 CD-RW
and an MP3 player can be interfaced to the front of a system
when in use, and then tucked away, avoiding the common
"rat's nest" behind many computers.
On the other
hand, what Chaintech calls the Body Theater simulated
six-channel headphone is more of a novelty than anything.
Sound quality is difficult enough to perfect with a set of
ear buds. Never mind trying to simulate six channels
of audio. The 7VJL itself features an integrated five
watt headphone amplifier, which helps properly drive the
Body Theater. Even still, I'll stick to my Sennheiser
HD600 cans.
The round cables
included with the 7VJL are invaluable. Like the
CBOX, rounded cables help eliminate a mess, only within
the case - a luxury for which many enthusiasts are willing
to pay handsomely. The inclusion of Norton Anti-virus
will be helpful to many, but the rest of the software bundle
isn't overly inspiring.
Layout,
BIOS, and Overclocking
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