K7VZM Features

We have covered the basic features of the chipset that drives the motherboard and supports the other corresponding PC components. As written previously, the VIA Apollo KT133 chipset was designed to support SOCKET A - AMD Thunderbirds and Duron processors.

The K7VZM comes in a MicroATX form factor and is manufactured using a 4-layer printed circuit board supported by the popular VIA Apollo KT133 combination of VT8363 North Bridge and VT82C686A South Bridge chipsets. The motherboard as expected supports the 462 pin SOCKET A - AMD based Athlon Thunderbirds and Duron range of processors, Elitegroup also claims future support for processors up to and including 1.5GHz Thunderbirds, we were a little concerned by this claim considering the CPU Voltage solution is based around a 2-Phase Power Solution (4 transistors) only, it does however, have 12 x 2200Mfd capacitors which probably would provide enough power supply filtaration. Our test being based on a Duron 750MHz, we decided to put this claim to test by using our 1.1GHz Thunderbird processor only to find the transistors were somewhat "hot" to touch, although this is not a major issue for processors up to 1.1GHz, claims of up to 1.5GHz however, cannot be supported by us irrespective of the capacitors, and as such should be treated by all consumers as speculative. Memory support is via two 168-pin DIMM sockets for 3.3V SDRAM (PC100 and PC133) to a maximum of 1.0GB. Equipped with an Award Plug and Play BIOS - ID - VZM11b version 1.1b release date of 28 August 2000, configuration is accomplished entirely from within the BIOS. The FSB settings range from 90MHz to 124MHz in steps of 90,95,100104,105,112,117 and 124MHz the only drawback to this is the non-availability to alter the processor's core voltage. Although there is flexibility to set the processor frequency up to 1.5GHz, our little experiment of overclocking the processor at 850MHz failed miserably failing to boot and not even achieving anything like a decent P.O.S.T. This is clearly not a motherboard for overclockers. This motherboard is no different from the other VIA KT133 chipset boards by the 4 x AGP support and the standard 2 channels of Bus Master supporting up to four UDMA 33/66 (up to 4 HDD devices), as expected no additional support for ATA-100. Support for sound is via the onboard AC97 Audio Codec from RealTek Avance ALC100 and the onboard LAN is again by RealTek using the 8139C chipset. Support for four USB ports (Two SB Connectors as header onboard), the header for the extra USB ports were not supplied and at the time of going to press we were still awaiting confirmation as to whether this would be included as standard. As one would expect from a microATX motherboard you are not blessed with expansion slots and you only have two PCI slots for any other boards you may want to utilise.

Prev | Next