KT400A reviewed at anandtech

[RamonGTP]

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1807

Not sure if its been posted before... Looks like nForce2 is still king.

[NDD]

Not that I didn't expect it ... for a past few years, VIA became very comfortable with releasing "A" versions of their northbridges :rolleyes:
"Official" PC3200 support and FastStream64 memory controller ? Reeeeally :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[Peter M]

Well the new RAM controller is a fair bit faster than the old one in KT400. This is a dramatic improvement, I'd rather welcome VIA for bringing the improvements forward as they happen, rather than waiting until the next all-new platform evolves. Pin and function compatible evolution of chipsets is a good thing. KT133A, KT266A, KT400A, all of those weren't exactly "bugfixes", they all had functional and/or performance related new stuff in them while being fully compatible to their non-A predecessors.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Well their aint much in it, but the nf2 is still king of the hill, not to say VIA are bad though, im quite a fan of theirs... good job i own an nf2 though :p

--Jakk:t

[NDD]

Originally posted by Peter Missel
Well the new RAM controller is a fair bit faster than the old one in KT400. This is a dramatic improvement, I'd rather welcome VIA for bringing the improvements forward as they happen, rather than waiting until the next all-new platform evolves. Pin and function compatible evolution of chipsets is a good thing. KT133A, KT266A, KT400A, all of those weren't exactly "bugfixes", they all had functional and/or performance related new stuff in them while being fully compatible to their non-A predecessors.
Sorry Peter, but I can't fully agree with you.
While KT133A was a clear success, adding so needed 133MHz FSB support to "heavily revised" KT133 (ex-KX133), KT266A and its "followers" added nothing really new except for enhanced performance. Sure, having another "free" 5% performance boost with a new northbridge is quite nice, but what do you think of a company which keeps releasing "bugfixed" versions of its chipsets all the time, for quite few years already ? They did the same with KT333, too, but KT333A was never released, they just marked the next revision as CE. And it's only had AGP 8x, which I sure didn't work or worked not good enough in the CD revision. The same goes with KT400, can you remind me please what exactly it didn't "officially" support in the first place, 200MHz FSB processors or PC3200 memory ? :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
I doubt if it's the marketing strategy or simple incompetence of VIA chipset engineers ... coz SiS does exactly the same, with its DX/FX chipset revisions/modifications, again, to "officially" support new features ...

For some strange reason, now when I think about it, nVIDIA's nForce2 supported PC3200 long before it was accepted as a standart by JEDEC and Athlons with 200MHz FSB even today, althought they weren't introduced yet :rolleyes:

[$1500-P4 gamer]

"For some strange reason, now when I think about it, nVIDIA's nForce2 supported PC3200 long before it was accepted as a standart by JEDEC and Athlons with 200MHz FSB even today, althought they weren't introduced yet "

YEP. JDEC didnt pass the mark on ddr400 yet. BUT Nforce2 tested each co's mem themselves and recomended the ones that work since jdec couldnt get a standard set in time-lazy sob's anyhow! Cheers to nvidia in the chipset market-may there venture be long term!:)

[Beeblequix]

I have to say I'm disappointed.

I really liked when my kt266A board was the highest-performing Athlon solution.

And I was really expecting the new kt400a to be 5% faster than the current top dawg.

Via better get their chip-design-chic to come up with an anstonishing solution, and soon. We can't have anyone maker sit at the top too long (especially on their second attempt).

ß