FIC AD11 Socket-A AMD 760 DDR ATX

Introduction

AMD's incredible success last year can be attributed to their high performance and very affordable Athlon processors.  However little credit is given to the company that played a significant part in making it all possible.  Without VIA, the Athlon would be without a home, luckily VIA was able to not only produce the KT133 chipset in great quantities but they also made it into a very reliable and mature platform for AMD's flagship.

Unlike Intel, AMD is not capable of supplying the market with both microprocessors and chipsets.  The only reason we even see chipsets from AMD is that they do step in every now and then to promote new technology that they would like to see the third party vendors adopt.  The most recent case in point being the 266MHz FSB and DDR SDRAM.

FIC has always been an avid AMD supporter.  Because of their very close relationship to VIA, FIC has been producing motherboards for AMD platforms for the longest time, dating back to Socket-7 boards such as the ever so famous PA-2007.  In more recent history they released the SD 11, which was one of the first Slot-A motherboards to ever hit the market in spite of strong pressures against supporting the platform from Intel.  During the summer of 2000 FIC released their KT133 solution: the AZ11.  Unfortunately, with boards like the ASUS A7V and the ABIT KT7-RAID, the AZ11 was somewhat disappointing in terms of feature set.  What was even more disappointing was that we later discovered that the AZ11 had multiplier control after all, and the engineers simply failed to provide the dipswitches to control the settings.  Had they properly done so, the AZ11 would have been the first Socket-A motherboard to break the Athlon's multiplier lock.  Months later FIC released the AZ11E, a completely new design based on the same KT133 chipset, but basically what the original AZ11 should have been, just a few months too late.

Armed with another chipset from AMD, FIC has every reason to come out with another motherboard based on it.  This time around, utilizing such features as the 266MHz FSB and DDR SDRAM, FIC is able to bring to market their first AMD 760 based motherboard.  Back in September we offered a preview of the AD11 and we were quite impressed with its performance and stability, especially considering it was a very early beta platform. 

Fast forwarding to the present day, we have the final, shipping revision of the FIC AD11 armed with the final, shipping revision of the AMD 760 chipset.  How does it stack up to the KT133A and competing AMD 760 solutions of late?  While it was the first AMD 760 board we laid eyes on, let's see how well FIC has improved the design since we first met.