VIA Apollo Pro 133/133A Motherboard Roundup - February 2000

FIC KA-11

Our initial experience with the KA-11 was not a good one at all -- the board would consistently lock up and was far from stable.  A BIOS update managed to fix some of the issues we encountered, but the stability was still below average and left us with a sour taste after quite a bit of testing using the board. 

There are obviously some issues with the KA-11’s BIOS with the most recent update dated 1/13/2000 - QM413, which fixed quite a few of the incompatibilities which FIC attributed to PC133 memory and AGP 4X graphics cards, but the board still isn’t as stable as the ASUS or Gigabyte boards in the roundup. 

FIC has implemented an optional 6-pin ATX power connector that offers power supply fan speed monitoring and control for power supplies that offer such capabilities. While this may not seem like the most useful feature, it is unique nonetheless.

FIC, like most other 133A manufacturers, uses the older AWARD 4.51PG BIOS setup on the KA-11.  That BIOS is highly customized by FIC with a feature called BIOS Guardian. During POST, a couple hot keys are listed that give you access to fail safe defaults, performance defaults, clock speed configuration, and even the Award BIOS Flash program that is built into the BIOS.

The board is completely jumperless, but the board lacks the ability to configure the AGP and PCI ratios, so overclocking can be a bit tricky. The best way to avoid this is with an FC-PGA CPU in a Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter with jumpers for setting the FSB speed.