Documentation, Downloads, Drivers
Hardware and BIOS aside (for the moment) - the first big positive aspect when you chose a mainboard of a still existing manufacturer for your retro build, is, that you'll most likely won't have too much trouble finding documentation and BIOS files.
The support site for the A7N266-C can be found easily when you go to your search engine of choice and type "a7n266-c support".
Asus still offers the manual, the latest BIOS versions and even drivers for download. The drivers are incomplete and outdated, however. Moreover, the driver for the Realtek LAN chip is unavailable for any OS listed and for Windows 98SE, the audio driver is missing. But since the LAN driver can be easily obtained from Realtek directly and the audio driver gets installed during the nVidia chipset driver installation, this is not a huge issue.
Unfortunately Asus does not bundle a BIOS flash tool with the BIOS downloads and the utility is also not available for download in the BIOS & Firmware download section of the support page. The required "Aflash" utility can be found under Driver & Tools - there you have to select "Others" at the "Select OS" drop-down list:
There is also a CPU support list directly on the board's support page, where you can easily look up compatible CPUs for the A7N266-C.
On top of that, Asus also offers a global CPU Support search. Here you are not only able to search for a specific mainboard model but also the other way round: If you have an old CPU laying around, you can use the search form to find compatible mainboard models and maybe to get inspiration for your next retro build.
You can find it here: https://www.asus.com/support/cpu_support
System Setup and Usage
The initial setup of the A7N266-C was a bit bumpy. This had mostly to do with memory related issues. I defenitely wanted to bench this board both in single- as well as in dual channel memory configuration, but of course I wanted to limit the maximum memory installed to 512 MB in total, to maintain comparability to the other boards tested.
And this proved to be difficult and confusing for several reasons. First of all, I have very few “High End” DDR1 sticks with only 256 MB of size to choose from. Fortunately, my two 256 MB Kingston Hyper-X PC400 CL2 sticks were detected without problems. However, since these are single-ranked modules, they are not the optimal choice for the nForce, as I found out later.
Secondly, the memory settings offered in the A7N266-Cs BIOS are limited to several “CAS Latency” presets (2T Normal, 2T Turbo, 2,5T Normal, 2,5T Turbo, Auto) and this does not always translate to identical memory timings for the same setting, but changes with different memory modules installed.
For example: my two Kingston Hyper X 256MB modules run at CL2 2-2-4 when configured to “CAS2 Normal”. “CAS2 Turbo” does not work. My Standard Corsair XMS 512MB PC400 stick gets CL2 2-2-6 applied with the “CAS2 Normal" setting, in “CAS2 Turbo” mode, the resulting timings are CL2 2-2-5. This is also true, when I install a second Corsair stick for dual channel configuration.
So with the hardware I have at my disposal, I am not able to compare dual and single channel mode with the same memory timings applied. But this is actually not the biggest of problems, because the dual channel configuration is barely faster than the single Corsair stick, so that I initially even thought, dual channel wasn't active at all.
The BIOS POST does not show the active memory configuration, which does not help either of course. And since AIDA64 also reported the memory interface to be 64Bit, I really thought it was inactive. I tried different memory configurations, configured all BIOS settings related to memory to “Auto”, tried older BIOS versions - the results were always the same. Insidiously, the performance of the two Hyper X sticks in dual channel configuration was pretty similar to the performance of a single Corsair XMS stick, so I didn't consider another possible configuration (which seems logical now), which is of course testing a single Hyper X stick.
And this finally yielded notably worse performance results, so I had the confirmation - dual channel actually works. I am shure, that the performance of two dual-ranked modules would result in the best performance, but this also shows that a single memory stick can match the performance of two sticks running in dual channel configuration, depending on how they are organized internally.
There is another thing I want to mention (before I close the memory “chapter”). I was actually very lucky to have the board POST with the Corsair XMS v4.2 stick - as I found out during my BIOS flashs, the board seems not be able to POST with this memory module, when all memory settings are configured to “Auto”. When I first installed the XMS v4.2 stick, the timings were still set to “CAS2 Normal” from the Hyper X sticks before. So it runs the tightest timings without problems, but the A7N266-C seems to be unable to negotiate timings, when this stick is installed. An XMS v5.1 stick worked fine however, also with “Auto” settings.
After I sorted all memory issues out, I went on to the expansion cards. The first thing I was happy to see in the manual, is, that the nForce offers five INT-lines and that the AGP port exclusively uses INT-E and is not shared with any PCI slot. According to the INT table in there, PCI #1 und #5 are shared and also share their IRQ with the ACR slot / the onboard audio. PCI #2 is shared with the USB controllers, PCI #3 is shared with the onboard LAN chip and PCI #4 is sharing-free.
Within this process, I discovered that there is no way to disable the onboard LAN chip. While this is not to much of a problem for my testing (I just used it instead of my usual 3Com PCI card), I think the option should be there and I can't understand why it isn't. In my opinion it should be possible to disable ANY onboard component that isn't required for regular operation. Anyway - my setup for during the review was like that:
- PCI #1: free
- PCI #2: Voodoo 2
- PCI #3: Voodoo 2
- PCI #4: SATA controller
- PCI #5: SB Live!
I disabled all unneccessary onboard components and, as expected, this resulted in no shared IRQs. So far so good.
But the next problem I encountered, already occured during the nForce chipset driver installation. It is important to know, that nVidia's driver package contains the drivers for all onboard components (including audio, LAN and graphics drivers). However, unlike other integrated drivers (like VIA for example), you cannot select which drivers are actually installed during the setup process.
Although the onboard audio was disabled, the setup tried to install the audio drivers, which took forever and eventually led to an error message during the setup process (data cannot be copied..). While this can be acknowledged and the setup completes, it is still not very “refined”. Moreover, nVidia graphics drivers are also installed, although the A7N266-C has no integrated graphics at all. On top of that, the chipset drivers do not automatically enable DMA mode, so you have to set it manually after the reboot and.. reboot again.
Fortunately, all benchmarking went fine once the drivers were installed and I did not experience any further issues.
Asus A7N266-C (nVidia nForce 415-D SPP)
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Layout
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Features
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Overclocking Options
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Compatibility
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Documentation & Support
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Performance: GeForce 4 Ti 4200
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Performance: Voodoo 2 SLI
OVERALL
| Pros | Cons |
| + Good layout | – Memory compatibility and size limitations |
| + Great CPU support | – Fiddly driver installation |
| + Good performance, including PCI and IDE | – No support for 3,3V AGP graphics cards |
| + Onboard Ethernet | |
| + Quite good onboard audio |