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Introduction.The past year has seen the rise of AMD's K7 platform initially in the form of the Slot A Athlon and now in the shape of the Socket A Athlon "Thunderbird" and Duron processors. Coupled to these chips have been a remarkable three generations of motherboard designs. The first being Slot A boards based upon AMD's 750 "Irongate" chipset, the second being Slot A boards based upon the VIA KX133 chipset and now the third generation of boards based upon the new Socket A form factor utilising VIA's new KT133 chipset. Socket A motherboards have been appearing since July from most of the major manufacturers such as Abit, Asus, Gigabyte and so forth. AOpen have produced Athlon compatible motherboards since earlier this year when they launched their Slot A based AK72. The Slot A VIA KX133 platform has proved to be short lived as AMD worked quickly to move its K7 based processor line to the Socket A form factor. This required a new chipset in the form of the VIA KT133 and a major re-design of K7 compatible motherboards to accommodate socketed processors, thus motherboard manufacturers have had to implement a whole new generation of Athlon compatible motherboards only six months after they released Slot A boards based upon the KX133 chipset. The move to Socket A from Slot A has been far smoother and swifter than Intel's move to Socket 370 from Slot 1, something which must make life easier for motherboard manufacturers. AOpen's contribution to the Socket A motherboard market comes in the form of an initial two motherboards, the MicroATX based MK33 and the ATX based AK33. It is the latter of these two motherboard designs which Processor Emporium has had the pleasure to test throughout recent weeks. VIA Apollo KT133.The VIA KT133 chipset is the latest in VIA's line of chipsets designed to support PC-133 SDRAM. The KT133 is a relative of the successful Apollo Pro 133A chipset for the Intel P6 platform. Like the Apollo Pro 133A, the KT133 features support for PC-133 SDRAM, AGP 4X and U/DMA-66 hard drives. The KT133 (and earlier KX133) differs from the Apollo Pro 133A in that it features support for the 200 MHz DDR (Double Data Rate) EV6 bus used by AMD Athlon and Duron processors. For all intents and purposes we can regard the KT133 as being the Socket A version of VIA's KX133 chipset. Like many other KT133, KX133 and Apollo Pro 133A based boards, the AOpen AK33 uses the VT82C686A South Bridge controller. The 686A provides U/DMA 66 support and also support for up to 4 USB devices to be attached. The 686A also provides support for an AC97 audio codec, a feature which is becoming increasingly popular with many new motherboard designs.
VIA does intend to replace the 686A South Bridge controller with the new 686B which will provide support for U/DMA 100 hard drives. This though
is not implemented on any of the current KT133 based motherboards.
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