by Anton Shilov
10/08/2002 | 07:43 PM
We noted on the 23rd of September that VIA was going to cancel selling their KT333 core-logic (see this news-story) and offer their partners to buy a new version of VIA KT400 chipset with AGP 8x turned off and marked as KT333. We also told you that the manufacturers of mainboards were worried about the decision of cancelling the KT333 and using the newer North Bridge instead of the old one, since the latter is not pin-to-pin compatible with the former.
Our source in Taiwan has confirmed us that VIA Technologies now supply VIA KT400 with AGP 8x turned off and marked as KT333. In fact, the “newer” KT333 is marked as CF revision, while the original KT333’s stepping was CE. As you may see, there really should be numerous differences in the newer version compared to the older. As far as I can tell you, there are two main advantages VIA KT333CF can bring to the end-user. Firstly, the ability to transfer data to the South Bridge using the advanced V-Link 8x bus at the speeds of up to 533MB/s; Secondly, the memory controller of VIA KT400 appears to be a bit more efficient compared to VIA KT333CE, according to VIA and out testlab. <%BANNER[article]%>
Since VIA KT333CF can be considered as a breed of KT400, it can perform fastly compared to the KT333CE. So, when you buy a VIA KT333 based mainboard, pay your attention to the revision of the North Bridge. I believe that mainboards manufacturers also had to change the revision numbers of their PCBs, hence, it is not going to be very hard to determine the newer one even without removing the heatsink from the North Bridge.