The first demonstration of a mainboard based on Socket A DDR333 chipset from VIA, KT333 took place yesterday at Platform Conference now held in San-Jose. As we expected, VIA was the first to show such mainboard. Their sample based on the first VIA chipset with DDR333 support (due on February 20) revealed its working with the help of 3Dmark2001.
We’d like to highlight the fact that the North Bridge chip in that sample was launched last week, but it is CD revision already (traditionally, for VIA it is the ultimate revision). With all these facts together, we are waiting for VIA KT333 based mainboards to appear in stock in the end of February or in the beginning of March.
The San-Jose sample proved stable in spite of all the three DDR DIMM slots occupied with different DDR333 modules: from Micron, Samsung and Infineon. Unfortunately, there is nothing known about the performance of KT333 yet.
As a conclusion we’ll say that a rivalry Socket A DDR333 product from SIS, SIS 745 came to the market sooner than VIA KT333: SIS 745 based mainboards are already selling in some hardware shops all over the world.
You can see some pics at German tecchanel.de story.