CeBIT 2000 Coverage - Athlon Motherboards

Biostar M7MKB

Motherboard Specifications
Click to Enlarge
CPU Interface	Slot-A
Chipset	VIA KX133 VIA 371 North Bridge VIA 686A South Bridge
L2 Cache	N/A (on-chip)
Form Factor	microATX
Bus Speeds	Unknown
Voltages Supported	Unknown
Memory Slots	3 168-pin DIMM Slots
Expansion Slots	1 AMR Slot 1 AGP Slot 2 PCI Slots 0 ISA Slots
AC'97	Unknown
BIOS	Unknown

Biostar entered the Athlon motherboard market early on with an AMD 750 based solution that was never as widely available as the Gigabyte, MSI or FIC solutions that were available at the time. Thus they never became a huge name in the Athlon motherboard market.

Just like ASUS, Biostar will be releasing two KX133 based boards, a microATX and a regular ATX version of the same design. As we mentioned in our review of VIA's KX133 chipset, the lower cost the 686A South Bridge brings to the motherboard as a whole and the low cost of the 371 North Bridge will make microATX designs quite popular. And the fact that VIA has a fairly solid microATX reference design only encourages motherboard manufacturers to put together microATX Athlon boards.

The Athlon will soon make its journey into the low-end market to compete with Intel's Celeron as the new Thunderbirds are released, microATX boards like those from ASUS and Biostar will help this transition.

Biostar M7MKE

Motherboard Specifications
Click to Enlarge
CPU Interface	Slot-A
Chipset	VIA KX133 VIA 371 North Bridge VIA 686A South Bridge
L2 Cache	N/A (on-chip)
Form Factor	ATX
Bus Speeds	Unknown
Voltages Supported	Unknown
Memory Slots	3 168-pin DIMM Slots
Expansion Slots	1 AMR Slot 1 AGP Slot 5 PCI Slots 1 ISA Slot
AC'97	Unknown
BIOS	Unknown

The M7MKE is Biostar's ATX KX133 motherboard that is targeted at the performance desktop market segment. Biostar hasn't produced poor quality motherboards in the past, but then again they've never been at the top of our lists, it should be an interesting board to look at but it's doubtful if the board will ever become popular among AnandTech readers; especially with boards like the AOpen AK-72 and the ASUS K7V.