IntroductionASUS have had a long history of producing motherboards. In the past ASUS’s range of motherboards were known for their stability rather than overclockability but like so many other manufactures are listening to the market and have been doing motherboards that appeal to the overclockers without loosing the OEM market.
ASUS’s first dive into the AMD K7 market was the introduction of their first Slot A board called the K7M. ASUS were one of the very few manufactures that produced an AMD Irongate (AMD 750) chipset. This board won numerous awards for ingenuity and stability. ASUS provided this board with a 1 AGP, 5 PCI, 1 ISA and 1 AMR layout. Even with the problems with the AMD 750 chipset with GeForce video cards, ASUS’s K7M was one of the most stable and overclockable out of the AMD 750 range of boards.
With the eventual release of the VIA KX133 chipset ASUS went back to the drawing board and designed their next AMD K7 board. This new board provided a 1 AGP4x, 5PCI and 1 AMR layout. This board was named the K7V. With the release of the Slot A Thunderbirds, and the realization of the KX133 and AMD Tbird incompatibility ASUS took their K7V and added an extra layer to the isolation wall and increased the I/O voltage to accommodate the fast Slot A Tbirds, this board was labeled the K7V-T.
With the Socket A form CPU ASUS took a new approach with their Socket A based KT133 board, This board was called the A7V which we reviewed earlier. Now that the new KT133A chipset has arrived to the manufactures ASUS has put together a new board based on their success with the A7V, this new baby has been appropriately named the ASUS A7V133.
