X-bit labs

Contemporary Socket A Chipsets: NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400, NVIDIA nForce2 400, SiS748 and VIA KT600

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 07/08/2003 | 01:26 PM ]

We reviewed 4 new chipsets for Socket A processors. Hopefully, you will find our article helpful when deciding on the configuration of your future Athlon XP platform.

Table of contents:

• Closer Look: NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400
  
• Closer Look: NVIDIA nForce2 400
  
• Closer Look: SiS748
  
• Closer Look: VIA KT600
  
• Contemporary Socket A Chipsets Specifications
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance at 333MHz Bus Frequency
  
• Performance at 400MHz Bus Frequency
  
• Conclusion
  

The introduction of Athlon XP processors intended to work with 400MHz bus pushed the core logic developers to design new chipset versions supporting the new CPUs. As a result, many new mainboards have already arrived and will keep arriving into the market. Among their features will definitely be the support of Socket A processors working with 400MHz bus (200MHz FSB). This way, the new mainboards tending to be called contemporary should be based on absolutely new chipsets, which we haven’t yet taken a really close look at. Today we will try to make up for the missing bits of information on our site and will test several new generation Socket A chipsets. Among them are NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 and its single-channel nForce2 400 version, and two newcomers from SiS and VIA: SiS748 and VIA KT600.

In fact, we wouldn’t call this new round of competition between the Athlon XP chipset developers a thrilling one. The Socket A platform should theoretically start leaving the market this fall, when the new AMD Athlon 64 processors come out. Besides, there is still only one Athlon XP3200+ model, which requires 400MHz bus support from the mainboards. However, the intrigue remained there. Firstly, the mainboards with the officially supported 200MHz FSB will be very popular among overclockers, who are fond of tweaking Athlon XP processors by raising the bus frequency in order to speed up the whole system. Secondly, VIA KT600 is of great interest to computer users today, because according to the developer, they managed to design a single-channel chipset, which sometimes outperforms dual-channel nForce2 Ultra 400 from their competitor – NVIDIA. And thirdly, we are also very much excited to look at the new solution from SiS, because a low-cost chipset with good options for processor overclocking by adjusting the bus frequency can definitely find its fans.

Moreover, the launching of the new chipsets definitely implies that the older ones will be discontinued. In other words, if you decide to buy a new Socket A mainboard one day, you will very soon have to choose from the products based exactly on the solutions discussed today in this article. AMD is going to keep producing Socket A processors for at least a year from now, that is why it would be incorrect to regard the new chipsets as inappropriate or unpromising.

Well, enough of small talk. Let’s finally get acquainted with the new core logic sets.