What is your Socket A chipset of choice?

[mdzcpa]

Which chipset do you prefer for Socket A?

[Farabomb]

KT333 cause I just passed up a KT400 this morning :D

Too much $$

[NorthernYankee]

I vted for KT333 cause its the best chipset a the moment including the KT400 which currently...well stinks. Though I am looking forward to the nforce2 it looks like it could be a kickass chipset.

--NY

[sptw]

Sure, it will be NForce 2 as soon as i put my hands on it :)

[mdzcpa]

I've been waffling over this for a few weeks now. But, in the end, I think I'm going to give the NForce2 a shot. Although it's taking a while to get here, it does seem to offer a lot in a chipset, and is the only one, so far, which will claim to support DDR400 officially. I think the KT400 will too eventually, but that may be stepping or two down the road.

[RacerX]

I voted for the KT400. In those few days I tested the AT7 Max2 it was flawless after the new beta bios was released. Though my benchmarks cleary show to be the same speed as my KX7333 it just seemed faster and smoother to me. I very muched liked the serial ata, wished I had one of those new Seagate ata150 at the time.

No agp tearing, though lacking the 1/6th divider was a bumber. But hell we only have 266fsb chips anyways. Sooner or later these chips will end up being the bottleneck. Think we'll all see the 1/6th divider when we see 333fsb chips.

Not real confident in the Nforce2 boards. Via has proven over and over again they are the fastest socket a chip going. I would love nothing more to see Nvidia kick butt here, thus this would force via to make another chip, thus screwing us once again.

Just my thoughts.

ps, these boards do support DDR400. I ran some Xtremeddr PC3500 Samsung TCC4 chips. Its up to Xtremeddr, Corsair, Mushkin, etc to get these boards inhouse and test for compatability with their modules. I had my PC3500 at 217, no agp tearing what so ever at only 2.75v. spd timings, 2t. Downfall is data corrupiton at 215. I tried the raid controller, serial ata, and ide controller which all gave me corruption at 215. Its possible a different KT400 board will be different. I can't wait to get my hands on the KD7.

I can pretty much assure you more bios will surface to help with any KT400 bugs.

[MrP]

hmmmmmm i voted SIS just to be silly :D

one question though

i heard the nforce 2 was supposed to have seperate clock generators for ram, fsb, pci etc

if this is still the case is the nforce going to be the killer chipset or are via going to come back with the same???

toodles:xsofa:

[tripodal]

if there are seperate generators, i would hope that the mem/fsb can be linked. i imagine that if the cpu and memory are not in sync exactly there wont be much gain... ie 133 fsb 166 mem... is not really any better.
and yes tried and true kt333 will be mine.. as soon as i have more money LOL

[Player0]

The KT400 *does* support DDR400.

It only provides 333mhz (1/5) support to the CPU. Whats missing is a never-promised feature of the 1/6th PCI divisor on the FSB.

Some people seem to be confusing the ram clock with the FSB. The KT400 does exactly what its supposed to.

Via will soon only sell the KT266a and the KT400. KT333 will be soon phased out.

[RacerX]

Anyone think we'll see a KT400a chip that will support the 1/6th divider?

[Player0]

Doesnt seem likely. 1/5th PCI is only there because AMD had a working spec of a 166mhz processor. There has never been even an inkling of a 200FSB processor (we're lucky the 166 ones are coming at all), so I doubt there will be 1/6th support.

Via and Amd will keep the KT400 and KT266a lines going, and focus on K8 from this point in. Theres no economical advantage to releasing yet ANOTHER ddr chipset for K7.

Then again, next year can be a different story, as K7 becomes a 'budget' line, and if dual-channel becomes popular, Via may release a dual-channel DDR board, and it may have 1/6th for no other reason than they can make it. But...this seems unlikely as the dual-channel has historically not offered much benefit to the K7s, and the cost of development is quite high.

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by Player0
The KT400 *does* support DDR400.


Not officially it doesn't. The only reason there are DDR400 settings on current KT400 mobos is because the mobo makers added the feature beyond what VIA officially supports. And, unlike the KT333 which officially supported DDR333 before the JEDEC DDR333 spec was finalized, the KT400 offers no such official support...JEDEC approval or not. Somehow that just doesn't sound too assuring does it?

It is also quite apparent from the batch of KT400 mobos out now that DDR400 support is pretty hit n miss, or, at best, very limited (eg only able to use 1 or 2 DIMMs, only certain density sticks, etc).

Nope...VIA clearly has more work to do in the DDR400 support area.

[4.6POWER]

I'm not upgrading anytime soon... but I presume my own personal next setup will be a hammer platform.