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DFI CA64-EC VIA Apollo 133A Motherboard Review
DFI CA64-EC VIA Apollo 133A Motherboard Review - PCSTATS
Apollo Pro 133A based motherboards have been selling very well in the past year primarily due to their excellent performance/price ratio and good feature set. In this review, we will be taking a look at one such board based upon the said chipset-- but with a twist.
 80% Rating:   
Filed under: Motherboards Published:  Author: 
External Mfg. Website: DFI Jan 15 2001   P. Masrani  
Home > Reviews > Motherboards > DFI CA64-EC

Gaming Performance




Not bad for a 66MHz memory bus. As with the remainder of the tests, we should see a good increase in FPS once DFI adds the asynchronous memory feature.

As DFI's CA64-EC uses a low end AC97 CODEC, our expectations in terms of audio quality were conservative. Audio output of the CA64-EC showed some degree of interference, which may be acceptable for medium quality PC speakers. However, connecting a high-end set of PC speakers (or even a set of good headphones) can reveal the background hiss of the AC97 CODEC. Other than that interference the sound output was rather acceptable.

Most DFI boards we've tested so far on PCstats have proved to be mediocre overclocking platforms, while offered high stability standards. The CA64-EC paired with our reference Celeron 566MHz showed that it had decent overclocking potential. We've managed to touch a speed of 710MHz (by using a 83MHz bus setting) with absolute stability. This is 25% increase over nominal speed and is a very good sign considering that many of the VIA based boards we've tested so far were extremely poor Celeron II overclockers.

One downside of this board is the lack of an adjustment for Vcore. DFI should seriously reconsider adding voltage support to this particular model since it is marketed as an affordable power platform.

Conclusions

The DFI CA64-EC has a number of advantages over competitive products. These being ATA-100 support, AGP-PRO slot, support for gigantic heatsinks, very good board quality, decent overclocking capabilities and all this can be had for an extremely low price (can be found for only 78$ on Pricewatch). Despite the fact that lacks a manual voltage adjustment, its price makes the CA64-EC just too low to pass up, especially when considering its performance and feature set.

All-in-all, the DFI CA64-EC has a great deal of good going for it and should be taken into consideration, especially when looking for a solid product that is aggressively priced.

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Contents of Article: DFI CA64-EC
 Pg 1.  DFI CA64-EC VIA Apollo 133A Motherboard Review
 Pg 2.  Installation
 Pg 3.  — Gaming Performance

 
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