VIA's DDR-Runner For Athlon - The Apollo KT266 Chipset

Introduction

Finally, KT266 is becoming available now. What we are wondering though is if VIA is indeed following the above-mentioned German saying. This saying is not only about the fact that something may take a while longer. It is talking about 'good things'. This would indeed be the best excuse. You can afford to be late, but then you better be damn good. This article will now find out if Apollo KT266 is indeed the 'good thing' that it was worth waiting for. AMD's 760 chipset has so far proven to be very capable to stand its ground. We have already seen one other Taiwanese chipset maker failing to live up to the qualities of AMD's DDR-chipset. The performance of ALi's MaGiK1 chipset is anything but as 'magic' as its name would like to make you believe. Then there is VIA's Apollo KT133A chipset. It comes with 'old fashioned' PC133-support, but works with Athlon processors that run their processor bus at '266' MHz (in reality 133 MHz 'double-pumped'). Even AMD's 760 chipset had problems to provide significantly better performance than this 'beefed up' version of VIA's original Apollo KT133 chipset. Will the DDR-product from the same 'breed' be able to leave its older sibling far behind?