by Anton Shilov
09/22/2002 | 01:16 PM
According to OC Workbench web-site, who points to an Acer Labs’ representative, ALi MAGiK 1 chipset “does not have any problems when running at 333MHz FSB”. Since this Taiwanese core-logic designer does not launch anything new that supports the up and coming AMD processors with faster system bus, they now say that their one year old core-logic solution and mainboards on its base are be able to work with the new Athlon XP processors.
Please not that they do not say whether they mean ALi MAGiK 1 A0, A1, B1 or C1 revision of this core-logic, but since the first two are too old, while the B1 never saw the light of the day, I think they meant C1 stepping of the chipset.<%BANNER[article]%>
In fact, all I can is admit their statement. ALi MAGiK 1 appeared to be the first chipset that supports 333MHz processor bus for AMD CPUs. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of mainboards powered by this core-logic. To tell you the truth, I can remember only three such products: Iwill XP333, ASUS A7A266 and SOYO K7ADA. We even tested the first one and mentioned that the device provided great stability when overclocked. It also supports necessary dividers for PCI bus, hence, we have all the tools to tune the mainboard in order to get it work correctly when operating at 333MHz clock-speed for FSB. One should know that the CPU being installed should be supported by BIOS. Up to this moment, only ASUS issued a new BIOS version for the A7A266 mainboard that allows to install AMD Athlon XP 2700+ processors and above.
Even though it is great that customers who bought their mainboards a year ago will be able to make use of the new AMD CPUs, we have to grieve them about the performance of such combination. Even eleven month ago we told that ALi MAGiK 1 was not the fastest solution on the market and its performance was lower than that of VIA KT266A. Now VIA has its KT333 and KT400 that support loads of new and important features and provide even higher speed. Moreover, there are system logic products from SiS and NVIDIA to come and they can appear to be even more powerful and fast.
In short, ALi MAGiK was not the fastest when it was released and now will be the slowest chipset among its competitors. Is it good or bad? Well, it is definitely good for those who want to buy a new CPU and who will not have to get a new mainboard in addition, however, it is not good at all for those, who want to have the fastest system around.