For this month's continuation of our motherboard test (last month we looked at Socket 370 motherboards, while this month we concentrate on Socket A models) we have added a little of our own Socket A nomenclature as far as the chipset type is concerned. You will notice in our sidebar we have provided a simple table outlining the features of the VIA Apollo KT133 and KT133A chipsets.
However, the KT133A "North Bridge" chip, the VT8363A, has only just entered production while the KT133A "South Bridge", the VT82C686B, has been in production for a while. As a consequence, many of the motherboards are sort of a "hybrid"; that is, they have a KT133 North Bridge (VT8363) mated to a KT133A South Bridge (VT82C686B). This results in a motherboard that still only has a 200MHz Front Side Bus but includes an ATA-100 hard drive interface rather than the ATA-66 found in the "stock" KT133 South Bridge (VT82C686A). We have annotated such motherboards with a "(+)" after the chipset name.
| Product | Review | |||
 ASUS A7V |
Read Review | |||
| ASUS A7 Pro | Read Review | |||
| Epox EP-8KTA2 | Read Review | |||
| Epox EP-8KTA3 | Read Review | |||
| FIC AZ11E | Read Review | |||
| Gigabyte GA-7ZXR | Read Review | |||
| MSI MS-K7T Pro2 V1 | Read Review | |||
| SPECIAL MENTION | Read Review | |||
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| = Editors' Choice.
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| Feature | VIA Apollo KT133 | VIA Apollo KT133A |
| North Bridge | VT8363 | VT8363A |
| South Bridge | VT82C686A | VT82C686B |
| Front Side Bus | 200MHz | 200/266MHz |
| EIDE interface | ATA-66 | ATA-100 |
| Graphics | AGP4x | AGP4x |
| Memory | PC133 | PC133 |
6%
1%
