Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Motherboards > Changing Of The Guard: Four Athlon Motherboards For DDR400

Consistent Development: From KT266 To KT333 And KT400

1:08 PM - September 5, 2002 by Patrick Schmid

Chipset	VIA Apollo KT400	VIA Apollo KT333	VIA Apollo KT266A	VIA Apollo KT266
Launch Date	September 2002	February 2002	September 2001	April 2001
Platform	Socket 462	Socket 462	Socket 462	Socket 462
Processors	AMD Duron/ Athlon/XP	AMD Duron/ Athlon/XP	AMD Duron/ Athlon/XP	AMD Duron/ Athlon/XP
Multi-processor Support	no	no	no	no
Northbridge	VIA KT400	VIA KT333	VIA KT266A	VIA VT8366
Southbridge	VIA VT8235	VIA VT8233A	VIA VT8233	VIA VT8233
Front Side Bus	100/133/166 MHz DDR	100/133/166 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR
Memory Clock	100/133/ 166/200 MHz DDR	100/133/ 166 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR
Asynchronous Memory	yes	yes	yes	yes
Max. # DIMM Slots	4	4	4	4
Max. Memory	3072 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB
DDR SDRAM Support	yes	yes	yes	yes
Ultra-DMA/33/ 66/100/133	yes/yes/ yes/yes	yes/yes/ yes/yes	yes/yes/ yes/no	yes/yes/ yes/no
# USB connectors	6 (USB 2.0)	6 (USB 2.0)	6	6
Max. # PCI slots	6	6	6	6
Integrated graphics core	no	no	no	no
Integrated sound	yes	yes	yes	yes
AGP 1x / 2x / 4x / 8x	yes/yes/ yes/yes	yes/yes/ yes/no	yes/yes/ yes/no	yes/yes/ yes/no

When it comes to VIA's chipset family, progress can divided into two areas: first, there's the performance boost that results from particular methods, such as improving the memory controller - and here, memory increase is included. Secondly, numerous integrated features are updated from time to time to reflect the latest technology, for example, the implementation of UltraATA/133 or USB 2.0. It's difficult to categorize AGP 8x because there are no graphics cards available to test what the real performance advantages are that come with doubled AGP bandwidth.