SUMMARY: After the success of the AZ11 and the introduction of the VIA 686B Southbridge, FIC took the AZ11 designed, added built in overclocking options and added the 686B Southbridge and labeled it the AZ11E. Now with the KT133A chipset supporting 266FSB FIC have once again gone at it with the new FIC AZ11EA which we are reviewing today. Grab a coffee and watch as Cameron Johnson tells us about the FIC AZ11EA motherboard!
The FIC AZ11EA is FIC’s 5th motherboard for the AMD K7 processor line. The first board to come from FIC to support the K7 family was the SD11. The SD11 was an ATX from factor board based on the AMD 751 Northbridge chipset and the 686A Southbridge. This was the very first AMD K7 board to market. This board did have some problems with resetting on the user at random, this was fixed later on with a resistor added to the board. Along with most of the AMD 750 bard boards, the SD11 did have some problems getting GeForce classed video cards to run in AGP2x. Symptoms of the GeForce bug was the system crashing in games that required the 3D acceleration. Later revisions of the AMD 750 chipset with the upper Bypass did pretty well resolve this problem but this slight glitch did put a damper on 750 based boards. Like MSI, FIC skipped the whole KX133 stage of chipsets and waited until the introduction of the KT133 chipset. When the KT133 became readily available, FIC used this chipset and created the FIC AZ11. This AZ11 like the SD11 was the first Socket A solution to market. The AZ11 was one of the first motherboards to actually show support for the AMD Athlon/Duron overclocking features, FIC had placed jumper solders for the multiplier adjustments but no pins. If the user wanted to adjust the multiplier of a AMD Athlon/Duron CPU on this board the user would have to solder the jumper pins onto the board themselves.
After the success of the AZ11 and the introduction of the VIA 686B Southbridge, FIC took the AZ11 designed, added built in overclocking options and added the 686B Southbridge and labeled it the AZ11E. Now with the KT133A chipset supporting 266FSB FIC have once again gone at it with the new FIC AZ11EA which we are reviewing today.
Specifications
CPU Supports AMD Athlon 700 ~ 1.2Ghz @ 200Mhz FSB Supports AMD Athlon 1Ghz ~ 1.4Ghz @ 266Mhz FSB Supports AMD Duron 600 ~ 850Mhz @ 200Mhz FSB Reserves support for Future AMD Athlon/Duron CPU @ 200Mhz FSB
Chipset VIA KT133A Chipset VIA VT8363A Northbridge AGPset VIA VT82C686B Southbridge
Bus Frequency 100MHz/133MHz Internal 200MHz/266MHz External Alpha EV6 Communication Bus
Expansion Slots 1 APG 2x 4x 5 PCI 1 CNR
Onboard Preferables VIA VT1611A AC’97 Software Audio Codec Audio Alert II (Optional)
Expansion Ports 1 PS2 Keyboard Port 1 PS2 Mouse Port 4 USB Ports (2 rear accessible, 2 via optional expansion bracket) 2 Serial Ports 1 Parallel Port 3 Audio Ports (Audio out front, Line in, Microphone) 1 Midi/game Port
Special Features CPU Multiplier adjustments dipswitches FSB and VIO adjustable via BIOS Vcore adjustable via dipswitches
