chip sets

can someone give me a quick tutorial of some chip sets...

e.g. kt133 etc.

thanks.

i850 = Bad
i845 = Good

Nice Intel and AMD users get a Cookie.... Yummy

BX is to i815 as Countach is to Diablo.

Both are decent chipsets.

<b>
"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
</b>

ok here is some:

Chipsets are the heart of your motherboard, they decide most of the specs of the board, and control each and every function on the board. basically they are a set of chips, usually three or two, or these days, even one(!) basically, they are integration of discrete chips that traditionally used to control each function on older motherboards, the PCs and XTs, like the 8251 serial controller, 8253/4 counter timer, 8255 I/O port, 8237 DMA controller, 8259 Interrupt controller etc. There were no memory modules, sockets were provided to put in discrete chips, and later memory upgrades were done using memory chips on ISA cards. A separate I/O card was needed to implement serial and parallel ports, the Floppy controller and Hard disk controller.

The chipsets integrate advanced decendents of these discrete chips onto a single one.

Traditionally, the two/three chips had some functions logically divided among them, like all the I/O, memory interface etc. The Northbridge has the memory controller, the PCI and AGP buses and the interface to the CPU, and hence you need a different chip for different CPU. The memory controller decides what kind of memory the platform will support e.g. EDO, SDRAM, DDR-SDRAM or RDRAM and what speeds the memory could run at. The AGP and PCI buses are also controlled by the Northbridge that decides the maximum number of PCI slots and AGP spec that the board will support.

The Southbridge connects to the Northbridge via PCI bus and controls all the I/O namely the Serial, Parallel, USB ports, PS/2 ports, IDE and Floppy controller and also provides a PCI-to-ISA birdge for ISA slots. Newer Southbridges might support many other devices or interfaces like the Network adapter, Modem, AC97 devices etc.

Usually a chipset is referred to the combination of both the chips or any other supplimentary chips some vendors provide.

The KT133 i.e. the VT8363 chip from VIA is the Northbridge, which is basically the component that connects to the AMD Athlon/Duron processor, while it is usually paired with the VT82686A/B Southbridge, the function of which is generic and might be used with Northbridges for Intel chips or even Northbridges from other manufacturers as well.

The Intel has its southbridge in PIIX4 - the 82371 chip, while VIA has 82586A/B, 82686A/B chips, ALi has 1543, 1535, SiS has a SiS5595 chip etc.

Now Intel invented a new architechture called the Hub architecture with its 810 chipset. The 810 has a onboard graphics controller, the i740 design incorporated as i752 in 810. There is no Bridge thing, and the two chips are called GMCH (Graphics and Memory Controller Hub) and ICH (I/O Control Hub.) Crudely, you can regard the GMCH as the Northbridge and ICH as Southbridge, but those are different. Here, the PCI bus is controlled by ICH, the Southbridge and not the Northbridge like in older chipsets. In 810, the 82810 chip is the GMCH while the 81801AA/AB/BA chip is the ICH. Other than these, the board can have one more chip, the Firmware Hub or FWH, the 81802 chip which controls the BIOS and offers several general purpose ports that could be used for implementing security, such as the Intrusion Detection Switch etc.

Many of you with a 810 based motherboard might have wondered about the some Unknown Device that crops up in the Device Manager and have no clue whatsoever about it. Its the FWH that goes unrecognised by Windows. Installing the Inf update that comes on the motherboard CD will let Windows identify this device.

Just like the Southbridge, the ICH can be used across different GMCHs, the same 801 chip (in its different versions like AA/AB/BA, those differentiated by the IDE transfer rates it supports 66 or 100 Mbps) is used across all GMCHs, the 810E, 810E2, 815, 815E, 815EP, 820, 840 and even the 850 for P4. The 815EP, 820, 840 and 850 do not have onchip graphics controller so they are just called MCH.

With VLSI technology and newer fabrication methods developing today, all the bridges and hubs are about to be integrated into a single chip, some have already done it. The SiS735 and SiS630 follow the bridge architecture, but is implemented with a single chip that controls all the functions, basically both the bridges are fabricated on the same chip, thats reduction in cost!

Now almost all chipset vendors are inventing their own architectures and Northbridge/Southbridge link like VIA using V-Link Hub architecture in their latest Pro266 (VT8633) DDR chipset for socket370 processors, that will connect to VT8233 Southbridge via V-Link which provides a 266 MBps bandwidth. I guess its a DDR link that provides exactly double the bandwidth of PCI.

The nVidia nForce chipset does have the Bridge architecture, but the two bridges are not linked by PCI bus as it is ususally, but the newer bus architecture called HyperTransport developed by AMD that offers 800 MBps bandwidth against 132 MBps with PCI. And the Northbridge is called the IGP - Integrated Graphics Controller which carries the GeForceMX graphics core, while the Southbridge is called MCP - Media and Communications Processor.

SiS735 uses a "Build-in Multi-threaded I/O Link" to connect to its onchip Southbridge which provides 1.2 GBps bandwidth.

Lastly here are some links to the chipset homepages:

The Intel chipset central
<A HREF="http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/" target="_new">http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/</A>

The Intel 82440 chipset (Northbridge: 82443; Soutbridge: 82371) for slot1/socket370 processors. It was available in different versions like FX, LX, EX, ZX, BX, out of which BX was the most popular one)
<A HREF="http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/440bx/" target="_new">http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/440bx/</A>

The Intel 810 chipset (GMCH: 82810/E; IOH: 82801AA/AB/BA) for slot1/socket370 processors
<A HREF="http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/810/" target="_new">http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/810/</A>

The VIA KT133 (8363 chipset) for AMD Athlon/Duron processors
<A HREF="http://www.via.com.tw/jsp/en/products/apollo/kt133.jsp" target="_new">http://www.via.com.tw/jsp/en/products/apollo/kt133.jsp</A>

The SiS620 chipset (Northbridge (with onboard SiS6326 graphics controller core): SiS620; Southbridge SiS5595) for slot1/socket370 processors
<A HREF="http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/integrated/socket370/620.htm" target="_new">http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/integrated/socket370/620.htm</A>

The SiS630 single chip, chipset
<A HREF="http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/integrated/socket370/630.htm" target="_new">http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/integrated/socket370/630.htm</A>

The SiS735 chipset for AMD Athlon/Duron processors
<A HREF="http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/oa/socketa/735.htm" target="_new">http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/oa/socketa/735.htm</A>

The ALi Aladdin V (M1541/2 Northbridge) chipset for Socket7 (Super7) processors
<A HREF="http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/products/corelogic/aladdin_5.htm" target="_new">http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/products/corelogic/aladdin_5.htm</A>

The ALi Magik1 chipset for AMD Athlon/Duron processors
<A HREF="http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/products/corelogic/alimagik_1.htm" target="_new">http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/products/corelogic/alimagik_1.htm</A>

The AMD760 chipset (Northbridge: AMD761; Southbridge AMD766 but usually the 761 is paired with VIA686A/B on many boards)
<A HREF="http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/760chipset.html" target="_new">http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/760chipset.html</A>

The nVidia nForce IGP
<A HREF="http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=igp" target="_new">http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=igp</A>

The nVidia nForce MCP
<A HREF="http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=mcp" target="_new">http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=mcp</A>

Its just a small piece of info, hope its enough for now!

Please point out for any mistakes or factual errors.

girish

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

Damn!

Your Good.

<b>
"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
</b>

thanks! guess there are no mistakes!!

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>