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Introduction.Recent months have seen chipsets manufactured by Taiwanese company VIA have gained a considerable attention and marketplace acceptance due to the problems encountered by Intel with it's new i820 chipset. The reports to compatibility problems with the i820 and the extremely high cost of Rambus RDRAM modules has meant that many motherboard vendors and consumers have sought alternative chipsets to the costly i820, the poor graphics performance of the i810 and i810e and the ageing (but still good) i440BX chipsets from Intel. This is where Taiwanese chipset manufacturer, VIA steps in with it's Apollo Pro133 and newly released Apollo Pro133A chipsets. There is an alternative to using Intel chipsets with Intel's P6 family of processors (Pentium II/III and Celeron), and we at the Processor Emporium have had the opportunity to examine at first hand a motherboard based upon the VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset, namely the EPoX EP-3VCA. The EP-3VCA is the latest motherboard from EPoX which is designed to support the Socket 370 CPU interface introduced by Intel in 1999 with the release of the PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) Celeron processor. The Socket 370 CPU interface is now being promoted by Intel as the way forward for it's "Coppermine" Pentium III processor range in the new FC-PGA (Flip Chip Pin Grid Array) packaging. The EP-3VCA features support for the new FC-PGA Pentium III with it being compliant to the VRM 8.4 voltage regulation standard. Thus the EP-3VCA is compatible with many of the upcoming FC-PGA Pentium III processors which we are likely to see in the near future. VIA Apollo Pro133A.The VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset is the latest in a line of Intel P6 compatible chipsets from Taiwanese manufacturer VIA and offers a number of new features over it's VIA predecessors and Intel rivals. At the core of the Apollo Pro133A chipset is the VT82C694X North Bridge controller which features support for the 133 MHz Front Side Bus, AGP 4X, PC-133 SDRAM and VC (Virtual Channel) SDRAM. The VT82C694X is an improvement over the VT82C693A North Bridge controller as used in the Apollo Pro133 chipset in that it features support for the new AGP 4X graphics standard. The VT82C694A also features a 1:2 AGP to bus speed ratio necessary for the sucessful operation of the 133 MHz bus. This is in addition to the standard 1:1 AGP divider (for the 66 MHz bus) and the 2:3 AGP divider (for the 100 Mhz bus). The South Bridge controller for the VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset can be any one of the following:
Both the 596B and 696A have been seen before with previous VIA chipsets such as the Apollo Pro+, Pro133 and the MVP3 Super Socket 7
chipsets. Both the 596B and 686A feature support for U/DMA 66 which is needed for the latest generation of E/IDE hard drives. The 686A
also features support for AC97 Audio Codec's and features integrated hardware monitoring. It also features support for up to 4 USB
connectors to be fitted.
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