VIA KT333 Put To The Test: 18 Motherboards Compared

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Dilemma Of The VIA KT333: Still No USB 2.0 Support

To get to the point: all 18 motherboards in the test bed were indeed equipped with the VIA KT333 chipset, but the USB 2.0 function has not yet been integrated in the Southbridge of the chipset. In practical terms, this means that pins of the Northbridge and the Southbridge of its predecessor, VIA KT266A, are compatible to the KT333, so a new board layout is not required. However, in order to enable USB 2.0 functionality, an additional chip must be placed on the board, since the latest VIA Southbridge, the VT8233A, does not offer this feature yet. In any case, this modification involves a completely new motherboard design. Numerous manufacturers represented in this comparison have adapted the design in order to make room for the USB 2.0 chips or other features such as RAID, network, FireWire or sound functionality.

Comparison: VIA KT333 Vs. KT266A

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Chipset	VIA Apollo KT333	VIA Apollo KT266A	VIA Apollo KT266	Nvidia nForce
Introduction	February 2002	September 2001	April 2001	September 2001
Platform	Socket 462	Socket 462	Socket 462	Socket 462
Supported 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 KT333	VIA KT266A	VIA VT8366	Nvidia IGP 128
Southbridge	VIA VT8233A	VIA VT8233	VIA VT8233	Nvidia MCP-D
Front Side Bus clock	100/133/166 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR
Memory clock	100/133/166 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR
Asynchronous memory clock	yes	yes	yes	yes
FSB overclocking	up to 230 MHz	up to 200 MHz	up to 200 MHz	up to 150 MHz
Max. # DIMM slots	4	4	4	3
Max. memory	3072 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB
SDRAM support	yes	yes	yes	no
DDR SDRAM support	yes	yes	yes	yes
Dual-channel DDR support	no	no	no	yes
RDRAM support (Rambus)	no	no	no	no
Ultra-DMA/33/66/100/133	yes/yes/yes/yes	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no
# USB connectors	6	6	6	6
Max. # PCI slots	6	6	6	6
integrated graphics core	no	no	no	yes
integrated sound	yes	yes	yes	yes
AGP 1x / 2x / 4x / 8x	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no
ACPI supported	yes	yes	yes	yes
USB 2.0 support	yes	no	no	no

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Chipset	AMD 760	SiS 735	ALi Magik 1
Introduction	February 2001	May 2001	February 2001
Platform	Socket 462	Socket 462	Socket 462
Supported processors	AMD Duron/Athlon/XP	AMD Duron/Athlon/XP	AMD Duron/Athlon/XP
Multi-processor support	no	no	no
Northbridge	AMD 761	SiS 735	ALi M1647
Southbridge	AMD 765	integrated	ALi M1535D+
Front Side Bus clock	100/133 MHz DDR	66/100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR
Memory clock	100/133 MHz DDR	66/100/133 MHz DDR	100/133 MHz DDR
Asynchronous memory clock	yes	yes	yes
FSB overclocking	up to 150 MHz	up to 150 MHz	up to 150 MHz
Max. # DIMM slots	4	3	4
Max. memory	2048 MB	1536 MB	1024 MB
SDRAM support	no	yes	yes
DDR SDRAM support	yes	yes	yes
Dual-channel DDR support	no	no	no
RDRAM support (Rambus)	no	no	no
Ultra-DMA/33/66/100/133	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no
# USB connectors	4	6	6
Max. # PCI slots	4	6	6
integrated graphics core	no	no	no
integrated sound	yes	yes	yes
AGP 1x / 2x / 4x / 8x	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no	yes/yes/yes/no
ACPI supported	yes	yes	yes
USB 2.0 support	no	no	no

Essentially, VIA had just made the big step from KT266 to KT266A: through the introduction and optimization of the memory interface, this chipset gained significantly in performance. This fact was proved in our previous test DDR333 For Athlon: VIA KT333 vs. KT266A . For the VIA KT333, this means that only the memory clock was increased from 133 MHz to 166 MHz for DDR333. An Ultra DMA/133 feature was added, for which Maxtor is the only one to offer hard disks that correspond to this transfer protocol. Currently, there are disks with a data capacity of 160 GB and an ATA/133 interface. The mechanics are the same, so the well-known Ultra DMA 66 cable with 80 pins (an increased number of grounded pins) can continue to be used.

The table above lists all of the chipsets that are currently available for the AMD platform (Socket 462) with DDR SDRAM support. Older chipsets with SDRAM support (such as the VIA KT133A) are not included here, because boards with these chips haven't been produced for a while now, or are no longer available on the market.