VIA Apollo KT266

[Booky]

The following is the first that I ahve read on the KT266. Anyone know if the statement about MSI haveing boards in March is true? I quoted it from aceshardware.com. Looks good to me but any other input/advice is good.

"The VIA KT266 will be very interesting and is likely to be a higher-performance solution than what we've seen from VIA in the past. VIA's chipset supports up to 4.0GB of the 266 MHz DDR SDRAM, and a new V-Link bus doubles the communication bandwidth between the North and South Bridge to 266MB per second. MSI told us that their VIA KT266-based boards will be available in March 2001."



Someday I will stop asking all the questions!

 

[Booky]

But when are the boards going to be released? I plan to build in April but I think this chipset is worth waiting for if it isnt available on a board I like yet. I really like the way MSI and Asus boards are layed out. Any ideas on when its supposed to be released? In my first post I said that I read MSI is supposed to have one in March but I think thats a long shot.

Someday I will stop asking all the questions!

 

[Booky]

I never said anything about Duel, I don't plan on haveing duel procesors. Nor do I plan on overclocking. I just want to know if anyone knows when boards with this chipset will be released.

Someday I will stop asking all the questions!

 

[IntelConvert]

Booky: All we can do is read what the more reputable sites are telling us and IMHO, Ace's is as reputable as any (if not more so). In that regard, they last reported that MSI, ASUS and others have KT266-boards that will debut in March (but that could mean 3/31!).

Here's the latest KT266 report from Ace's to wet your whistle:

VIA KT266 benchmarks (HARDWARE)
Posted By johan
Thursday, February 22, 2001 - 9:17:09 AM
JC found the first KT266 benchmarks here. I quote:
The results (Streamd) show that the system featuring the VIA Apollo KT266 and DDR266 SDRAM delivers a 20.8% performance improvement over the VIA Apollo KT133A based reference system configured with PC133 SDRAM and a 22% increase over the VIA Apollo KT133 based reference system. This translates into superior performance on applications such as 3D graphics that perform a large number of processor-to-memory transactions.
Sysmark 2000 Processor Performance: Although Sysmark 2000 is a CPU intensive benchmark where latency is a more critical factor than memory performance, the system does benefit from the greater memory bandwidth of DDR SDRAM, as shown in the chart below. The system featuring the VIA Apollo KT266 and DDR266 SDRAM delivers a 3.2% performance improvement over the VIA Apollo KT133A based reference system configured with PC133 SDRAM and a 4.1% increase over the VIA Apollo KT133 based reference system

 

[Booky]

Hold on I have to go to the bathroom for a min. Ok Back . 3/31 is fine by me since I cant build until I move into my new house on April 1

Someday I will stop asking all the questions!

 

[PatMcGroin]

I cant believe that booky told someone to wait for him to take a leak. The post he was replying too was 6 hours old. Maybe a good hearty crap and 3/31 will be here before he knows it.

You Dont Want To Be The Last to Know Anything.

 

[Booky]

lol who said anything about takeing a leak? I just said I was going to the bathroom. I didn't say for what :-()

Someday I will stop asking all the questions!

 

[stable]

As a heads up, we still like the 761 over the KT266.

Published benchmarks should be available next week, but the advanced picture looks as if the 761 clearly beats the KT266 in terms of stability and edges it out in benchmark testing as well. Sorry for the bad news, please don't flame the messenger.

Steve Benoit

Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'

 

[pvsurfer]

Steve: This is not to dispute what you are saying, as I only know what has been reported so far. But just based on the KT266's advanced design, your statement is difficult to accept. It also doesn't "jive" with:

<A HREF="http://www.planet3dnow.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Mainboards&action=display&num=3850" target="_new">http://www.planet3dnow.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Mainboards&action=display&num=3850</A>

But please keep us posted!

 

[stable]

Hi again pv!

I've seen this document and it makes no mention of the AMD 760 Chipset, rather it is a white-paper designed to show the theoretical DDR RAM performance achievable by using the KT266 chipset as compared to the VIA Apollo KT133A and KT133 chipsets using PC133 RAM.

Furthermore, we have not found ANY of the data on this sheet to accurately represent true world conditions as of this date, especially with the advent of new BIOS and 4in1 drivers for both the KT133A and KT133 chipsets.

We (at Stable Technologies and Co-op Laboratories) do not consider this to be a credible document in any way, shape or form. The details surrounding the system configurations (including disk components, RAM Manufacturers and specifications, versions of BIOS' used, driver versions and even the corresponding motherboard manufacturers as well as other critical information) was completely left out, therefore leaving the results (assumed) by this paper unverifiable and non-credible.

Finally, it should be made clear that the user posting this message, simply cut and paste the theoretical design capabilities from Via's R&D web site and turned the thing into a pseudo benchmark. Again, it should not be considered credible as the data is theoretical (and therefore useless) as NOTHING on this sheet is verifiable by anyone at this time.

Contrary to what was posted, our tests clearly show different pictures for the KT133A chipset when using RAM from different manufacturers (and model variations from those same manufacturers).

I would just consider that entire document a waste of time.

Thanks
Steve Benoit


Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'

 

[IntelConvert]

I found your reply to pvsurfer very interesting. I didn't realized that your organiztion had already conducted KT266 - AMD760 comparative tests!

Did those tests (or any other tests you may have conducted) also determine the realizable performace gain of DDR over KT133A (for comparably equipped systems)? If so, do those results pretty much agree with Tom's findings of roughly a 10% to 15% performance advantage to a DDR system? That would be of great interest to me (and I presume, many others)!



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by IntelConvert on 02/24/01 06:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[stable]

We have not yet finalized our test of comperable systems; however they are in process (we have several systems 'doing their thing') right now. I would agree that it PRESENTLY appears as though there is roughtly a 10-15% increase over the KT133A chipset; however, I would also qualify this by stating that it REALLY depends on the application.

Our major CONCERN at this point is how few applications are out there actually written to really take advantage of the new DDR RAM technology.

We feel that when the product becomes more mainstream, developers will re-compile their code to exploit the benefits of the bandwidth. Until then, you must take MANY of these benchmarks with a grain of salt as they don't actually represent a true realization of what the technology's capabilities are. Again, it would take some recoding and recompiling to achieve that.

Anyway, again I hope to have some firm numbers later in the week to compare all of the AMD platforms and the Intel PIII running the KT266 to eachother. Until then, we'll just have to let these bad boys run and run (and hopefully not crash!)... It presently looks like AMD's 761 with Via's VT82C686B and the Athlon 266MHz CPU is clearly beating the KT266, but we'll just have to wait and see for sure.

Steve Benoit

Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'

 

[Booky]

OK stable, Tom, anyone. We need a comparative benchmark between the MSI K7 Master, A7M266, and the new MSI board with KT266 chipset. I realise the board with KT266 isn't out yet(to my knowledge) so it'll have to wait but we need it as soon as possible. I need to know before April. Thanks

Someday I will stop asking all the questions!