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Introduction
VIA
still leads the chipset race for AMD's Socket
A CPU's and it seems that offerings from SiS and
ALi are pretty much left behind. After delivering
very well with the KT266A, VIA's competitors didn't
seem to be able to catch up and keep up with them.
After the KT266A, what more could VIA deliver?
It was proven that high bus speeds were very helpful
for the performance of AMD CPU's but there was
one simple problem: lack of the necessary PCI/FSB
dividers for high bus speeds. In other words,
overclocking to high bus speeds wasn't very advisable
since not all PCI or IDE devices would tolerate
those frequencies well. And there also remains
the fact that not all KT266A northbridges could
overclock to those high bus speeds and more often
than not, they couldn't be stable at those bus
speeds. SiS' 745 chipset was worth mentioning
because it was the first in supporting DDR333
but did not have the necessary PCI/FSB dividers
at high bus speeds. Another thing about the SiS745
was its poor performance even when running the
memory bus speed asynchronously to the CPU bus
speed. VIA had its KT266A but they wanted to bring
out a new product and offer working DDR333 and
thus, the KT333 was born.
The
basic differences between the KT266A and the KT333
are simple. The KT333 offers support for DDR333,
and this meant that the memory could run at 166MHz
DDR (DDR333) while the CPU front side bus speed
is at 100MHz DDR (DDR200) or at 133MHz DDR (DDR266).
Aside from that, the KT333 also adds support for
ATA133 IDE devices thanks to a new southbridge.
This time around, the KT333 now has a 1/5 PCI/FSB
divider and the northbridge overclocks a lot better
compared to the KT266A. This means that at bus
speeds of 166MHz DDR and above, the PCI bus would
no longer be in the dangerous zone of 42MHz but
would be again near the spec'd bus speed of 33MHz.
Keeps PCI and IDE devices safe while bumping up
the performance of the system overall.
Comparison
Chart
A
new chipset means a new set of motherboards and
it is expected that each and every manufacturer
would try to make their product unique and very
competitive to be able to sell lots of boards.
Like with the 8KHA+, Epox is again early in releasing
their new motherboard and this time based on the
KT333 chipset. Their board is given the name 8K3A.
The
Board, Test System |
