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Socket-A Chipset Roundup
EconolineCrush writes: "The Tech Report has a review up of VIA's new KT333 Socket A chipset. Though it's really a review of the KT333, a total of seven different chipsets from VIA, SiS, AMD, and NVIDIA are compared to determine the uniprocessor Socket A performance king. This is definitely worth checking out if you're in the market for an AMD platform, or are curious to see how your current chipset stacks up against the latest and greatest."
Perhaps they should be reviewing the total stability of any given solution. I for one know that I used to have an Iwill board based on the ALi MaGIK chipset, and it was a hell of a lot more stable than my current KT266A.
Tom's Hardware has a good article up.
"A total of 26 various benchmark tests clearly shows that the VIA KT333 chipset the best and most capable chipset for AMD CPUs. With only a few exceptions, not even the Nvidia nForce with its expensive dual-channel technology (DDR266) can put up a real fight against the newcomer KT333. With the launch of the KT333, the KT266A will become a thing of the past - you simply won't want to miss out on all the new features such as ATA/133, USB 2.0 or DDR333 support."
So does Anandtech: here.
"When the KT266A was launched it completely blew us away; the performance of the chipset was spectacular and it was clear that it would quickly become a top pick for all Athlon owners. The KT333 doesn't have nearly as great of an impact but the reasons behind that are understandable; both new features supported by the chipset, DDR333 and Ultra ATA 133 aren't features that will result in tangible improvements in performance today. Instead the KT333 is more of a technology enabling platform for VIA. The chipset will not cost any more to manufacture than the KT266A and thus motherboards won't increase in price. While DDR333 SDRAM isn't officially available today (the specification isn't complete), when it is first made available it will carry a price premium over DDR266 SDRAM."
There's a bunch of other good reviews of the set in all its forms and splendor.
Digit-Life
HardOCP
AnandTech
AMDDb
Via Hardware
</karmawhoring>
This tagline is umop apisdn.
They're to control timing so that instructions leaving certain areas of the CPU do not hit the bus before others. My friend who use to map PCB boards for a living calls them "speed bumps".
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
The Tyan Tiger MP kicks ass, IMHO. (AMD 760MP chipset). I've been running it since December, never crashed (from hardware, anyway. :-) One note with this board, be sure to get a *heavy-duty* power supply. My SMP box has an Enermax EG651P-VE-something or other (550W), which works *very* well (but is kind of expensive).
Be sure to stay away from the AMD 760MPX chipset (note the X) until early March, because on the current revision, *USB doesn't work at all on the Southbridge* (although I've heard vendors are shipping USB 2.0 cards to get around this problem, but do you really want to lose a PCI slot?)
---NEW! Crash Windows NT/2000/XP from any account using only printf!
I find it amusing how Tom's always reduces things to frames per second in Quake3. As if that's the best measure of performance for any component of a system.
I imagine in the future, manufacturers, instead of listing [MHz, drive speed, etc], will list modifiers to Quake3 FPS. ie- specs on a system of the future will read like a Dungeons & Dragons character sheet:
Bob's Machine of 3l33t Gaming
CPU of giant GHZ: +100 FPS
Elven Motherboard: +5 FPS
GPU of Rendering: +80 FPS
Cursed Hard drive:-15 FPS
magic DDR memory: +20 FPS
ISA SB16: -20 FPS
-----------------
Save vs Quake3: 170 FPS
Why can't someone produce motherboards wherein components other than the CPU are quickly upgradeable?
Wow, that's a good idea. I wonder how the cost of manufacturing for, e.g. a ZIF socket + chip compares to just surface-mounting or whatever the motherboard makers do now. (Although, actually I think at least one of my current motherboards has the southbridge in a socket).
I see two problems though:
So in other words, I think it's a great idea, but there's no way the chipset companies are going to have it while they're still acting like it's the 1950's and every single chipset is (a) proprietary, (b) guarded like it's the secret to eternal life or something. Oh well, we can always dream. :-)
---NEW! Crash Windows NT/2000/XP from any account using only printf!
Good point about the MPX chipset. I've been waiting patiently for the Asus A7M266-D and now that it's out, the USB is busted! Plus the boards I've seen have built-in audio, which I'd actually rather *not* have. And what's the deal with that little daughter-card looking thing where the power comes in? Looks kludgey. But the PCI USB 2.0 card is supposed to work in the 64-bit slot, no? So maybe 'losing' a PCI slot isn't that bad. I'm assuming the two 64-bit PCI slots are on a separate bus from the 32-bit slots... would this mean less IRQ conflicts?
So the Tyan Tiger MPX was starting to look good, but then I hear the USB card Tyan is shipping is NOT a USB 2.0 card. So now it seems like you're really losing a PCI slot, since there don't seem to be that many 64-bit PCI cards out there now (or you buy a new 64-bit USB card and junk the free one). Built-in LAN sounds great, and the board looks a lot cleaner, especially the standard hard drive power connector by the ATX power connector for more current. Tyan probably learned a lot from their first SMP Athlon boards.
Anyone else have any experience with SMP Athlons? Oh, and did you use Athlon MP's or did you cheat and use the XP's?
After assembling a new system consisting of an Antec case, Soyo Dragon Plus motheboard, 1GB Corsair DDR RAM, XP 1800+ CPU, 64MB GeForce 2 Ti, Sound Blaster Audigy, Yamaha CD-RW and Adaptec 2930 SCSI card (Notice the lack of cheap components), I've discovered that the VIA chipsets and Nvidia videocards have a history of not getting along, with all fingers pointing at the KT266A chipset.
Running Win2K Pro (fully updated), and the latest BIOS and drivers for everything, and not overclocking a darn thing, I'm still suffering random system lockups doing simple activites such as broswing the web. Games are too tempermental to seriously play. (It was really bad before I uninstalled the latest MS win2K rollup update - click on any browser link and have a 15% chance of the system hanging...)
I bought the Dragon Plus Motherboard based on all the wonderful online reviews of the board and chipset. Not one said anything about the lack of stability with the KT266A chipset, or any problems with lockups. Later, doing some google searching turned up message boards full of other people experiencing the exact same problems. The only "solution" discovered (and even recommended on the Soyo web site) is to drop the RAM/Bus speed to 100Mhz from 133Mhz. That kind of defeats the purpose of making a fast machine...
Now I'm trying to research a motherboard replacment (which means resintalling the OS and most software - shoot an afternoon there) based on stability first, then performance. I'm thinking nForce, but we'll see...
It's a shame to waste the money on motherboard I'm going to throw out, but there wasn't a warning to be found when I did my initial research. (Note to self: Use google more for these kinds of things)
-Matt