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 Chipset Comparison - VIA Apollo Pro133A versus Intel i815e versus Intel i815EP versus VIA KT133 versus KT133A.The past year has been very interesting for followers of the motherboard and chipset industry. Notably the past 12 months have seen the rise of VIA as a credible chipset rival to the mighty Intel with the Taiwanese firm producing such chipsets as the Intel Pentium III and Celeron compatible Apollo Pro133A and the AMD Athlon compatible KT133 and now KT133A. The past year saw VIA rise from being a bit part player most remembered for its Super Socket 7 chipsets. Whilst VIA rose, the number one chipset manufacturer Intel had a rather patchy year to say the least. Intel placed its bets on Rambus RDRAM becoming the main memory architecture for the PC platform throughout 2000 and lost due to a number of factors, such as the high price of RDRAM and problems with the i820 chipset. This left Intel with a problem, no chipset to replace its long-standing (and hugely successful) i440BX chipset. The i820 was a flop, and the i810 was always meant to be a budget solution with its integrated i752 graphics controller, Intel suddenly found itself losing out to VIA and the new Apollo Pro133A chipset, it needed a solution fast. Luckily for Intel, it was developing a chipset to bridge the gap between the low-end i810 and high end (RDRAM) i820 in the form of the i815. Essentially the i815 was to take the i810 chipset and add to it an external AGP 4X slot. Thus with the market rejecting the i820, Intel found itself pushing the i815 to the fore, and later introducing the i815EP. Away from the world of Intel based CPUs, the number two processor manufacturer AMD was having probably its most successful year to date in the CPU market with the new Athlon processor. Early in 2000 VIA launched the KX133 chipset to support the Slot A Athlon processor. By summer 2000 AMD had launched the new Socket A based Athlon processor and needed a new chipset for it, which VIA delivered in the form of the KT133. This chipset was based upon the Apollo Pro133A but featured the Alpha EV6 bus in place of the Intel GTL+ bus as found on the Apollo Pro133A. Early 2001 saw the KT133 enhanced to support Athlon CPUs running with a 266 (133 MHz DDR) MHz Front Side bus and was designated the KT133A. In the past few months we have had the pleasure of testing all of these chipsets at Processor Emporium, and their respective board reviews can be found at:
All of these boards have been outstanding in testing, which shows that the chipset market has become increasingly competative with VIA and Intel both vying to dominate the desktop chipset market.
To find out what we think of these chipsets, read on:
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