Socket A Is Coming: Test of 10 Boards

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Manufacturers Of Socket A Chipsets

The chipset selection for AMD's socket processors Athlon and Duron is quite meager, as there's currently only AMD's 750 and VIA's Apollo KT133 chipset. Only a few manufacturers - e.g. Gigabyte's GA-71XE - intend to use grandfather Irongate (AMD750). Most other board makers despise Irongate, since its restrictions to PC100 SDRAM and AGP 2x are not up-to-date anymore. VIA's KX133 chipset turned out to be unsuitable. Initially it was intended for Slot A and Socket A, but in practice the AMD CPUs only ran stable up to 800 MHz. Consequently the manufacturer dropped the KX133 for Socket A and thus you won't find any Socket A boards with the KX133.

While there is a variety of chipsets for Intel's socket processors (Pentium III and Celeron), including 440BX, 810/Whitney, 815/Solano, 820/Camino, 840/Carmel, and VIA's Apollo Pro 133 (A) as well as models from SiS and Ali, VIA's KT133 is pretty much the only alternative for Thunderbird and Duron. Two months ago most SocketA-motherboards only existed as samples, and only a few users were able to get their hands on a board back then. Meanwhile VIA is shipping a sufficient amount of KT133 chipsets to the motherboard manufacturers and customers can chose from a wider selection of boards. The current situation with practically only one chipset for Socket A motherboards, VIA's KT133, should change soon. As you can see in the following table, AMD, VIA, SiS and ALi are developing new chipsets for AMDs Socket A processors.

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Chipset	Alias	System Bus 1	AGP	Integrated graphics	SMP	Memory	Available
AMD750	Irongate	100 MHz x 2	2x	no	no	PC100 SDRAM	yes
VIA KT133	VT8363	100 MHz x 2	4x	no	no	PC133 SDRAM or VCRAM	yes
AMD760	Row 2 - Cell 1	133 MHz x 2	4x	no	yes	PC133 SDRAM or PC2100 DDR SDRAM	Q4/2000
VIA KM133	VT8365	100 MHz x 2	4x	yes	no	PC133 SDRAM or VCRAM	Q4/2000
VIA KX266	VT8367	133 MHz x 2	4x	no	yes	PC133 SDRAM or PC2100 DDR SDRAM	Q4/2000
VIA KM266	VT8367	133 MHz x 2	4x	yes	no	PC133 SDRAM or PC2100 DDR SDRAM	Q2/2001
SiS730S	Row 6 - Cell 1	100 MHz x 2	4x	yes	no	PC133 SDRAM	Q4/2000
ALi MAGiK 1	M1647	100 MHz x 2	4x	no	no	PC133 SDRAM orPC2100 DDR SDRAM	Q4/2000