Socket A Is Coming: Test of 10 Boards

Driver Installation

Problem I: Early BIOS Of The AOpen AK33

All motherboards worked immediately with a new installation of Windows 98 or 2000 and the driver update to VIA's All-in-One-Version 4.23 , apart from the AOpen AK33. We observed only low frame rates under Windows 2000. The reason: Two numbers of the device ID of the KT133 chipset had been switched in the BIOS.

Note the second number just before the 'PCI-PCI bridge' in the picture above. The AK33 reports "0583". This is the wrong value for the KT133, and so Windows 2000 will not activate the AGP driver. This is irrelevant under Windows 98, however, because the device ID does not matter. Therefore Windows 98 users will not encounter this problem.

This is the correct version: The KT133 chipset reports "8305" to the operating system. We contacted AOpen and promptly received a new BIOS that you can download from our FTP server . You only need an update if the boot screen shows a date before August.

Uwe Scheffel