Review: A7V133 and A7V Shootout (Page 4/10)

Posted: February 18, 2001
Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen

RAID 0

Besides the extra on-board sound, which I’ll never use, the A7V133 comes stocked with the ability to do RAID 0. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independant Disks. Up until recently, RAID has only been available to SCSI users. RAID on IDE was out of the question. However, things change when people demand change.

Asus has implemented what is called RAID 0. RAID level 0 is more commonly known as Striping. This level uses two or more hard drives to split data across and thus spanning the amount of work. RAID level 0 increases performance significantly but doesn’t offer any type of parity for data protection -- making the Redundant in RAID seem out of place.

With the A7V133, Asus chose to effectively use Promise’s new version of its UltraATA 100 controller. Just like VIA added new features and to its existing KT133 chipset, Promise did the same to its PDC20265 controller, adding the letter R at the end to denote RAID.

Since VIA’s KT133A chipset now sports native UltraATA 100, you can hook up a total of 8 UltraATA 100 hard drives to this motherboard. Talk about creating a cheap and reliable data server.

BIOS

Comparing between the A7V and the A7V133 in terms of their BIOSes, I would have to say that the A7V133 is better than the A7V. However, once the A7V is upgraded to BIOS versions 1005 and above, you basically have all the features of the A7V133 BIOS.

There’s an issue in the A7V series BIOS I want to talk about. I’m sure all the users of the original A7V have noticed it if they purchased a board while it still contained BIOS version 1002 or earlier. It seems that ever since A7V BIOS version 1003, the A7V platform has been a hot one, and I don’t mean that it’s a hot seller; I’m talking about heat. The heat emission from using an A7V board and a Thunderbird processor is extremely intense. Using an AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHz (266FSB) with an Alpha PAL6035 (with a 27CFM YSTech fan) cooler, my A7V133 test system reached a CPU temperature of 61C while playing a DVD with PowerDVD and typing this very paragraph. The last time I was using a 1GHz Thunderbird, I was on an A7V with BIOS 1002 and the temperature was at 41C while doing the same thing. Here’s a screenshot of the Asus Probe:

61C, Much Hotter Than Should Be.
I can only conclude that Asus has disabled something in their BIOS revisions greater than 1003 and the absence of that feature makes your CPU work harder than it should be. Most probably, that feature is auto HLT instructions. HLT instructions are special processor instructions that shut off certain parts of your CPU when they aren’t in use. This reduces power consumption and thus, produces less heat. Asus however, chose to remove those instructions from being enabled. Personally, I want my cool processor back and I don’t want to have to use software that steals cycles to do it. Put it back Asus!

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