List of VIA chipsets
The VIA KT- series (VIA KTxxx (A)) from VIA Technologies is a family of chipsets for PC motherboards. These chipsets are suitable for processors from Advanced Micro Devices with EV6 bus protocol.
Naming
Originally, the KT series should bear the name of a concentration camp, but since this shortcut turned out to be biased, the name KT was chosen. Renaming was not a problem as the label is not applied to the chip itself.
By the KT333 chipset name is also preceded by the name Apollo in the tradition of the older VIA Apollo series. Since this term in public went under, the VIA has this been officially eliminated from the KT400. The KX133 does not quite fit into the naming scheme, but it can not be seen because of its similarity to the KT133 chipset, or even as an independent chipset family.
The suffix A in the chipsets indicates that these are only a marginally revised version of the original version. These northbridges only a minor edit.
South Bridges
KTxxx (A) is the marketing name for the Northbridge of the chipset. Since all VIA South Bridges can be combined from VT8231 by V-Link with all VIA KT266 and P4X266 North Bridges from, you can not specify exactly what Northbridge is combined with what Southbridge. Because of the temporal evolution and desired features recommend the motherboard manufacturers still certain combinations:
- KX133 82C686A
- KT133 82C686A
- KT133A 82C686B
- KT266 VT8231
- KT266A VT8233
- KT333 VT8235
- KT400 VT8235
- KT400A VT8237
- KT600 VT8237
- KT880 VT8237
Models
KX133
The KX133 is the first chipset from a different manufacturer for the appointed by AMD with the Athlon EV6 bus protocol. Until KX133 offered only AMD with the AMD 750 ( Irongate ) a matching chipset on. This, however, was limited to PC-100, which enabled KX133 so for the first time PC -133 with AMD processors. It also marked the beginnings of support from AMD by other manufacturers in their efforts to the establishment of a second platform next to Intel.
KT133 (A)
The KT133 is the successor to the KX133 and the first chipset for AMD's Socket A. How this supports PC -133 memory, but it is otherwise very similar. However, a change required in the specifications of the bus protocol for Socket A processors a change to the chipset. Strictly speaking, the KT133 is thus only a new revision of the KX133.
The KT133A KT133 then expanded the order to support a FSB of 133 MHz. Otherwise, both chips are identical. Both chipsets support a maximum of 256 Mbit large memory chips.
KT266 (A)
The KT266 chipset is the first addition to the AMD 760, the support for DDR - SDRAM types PC-1600/DDR-200 and PC-2100/DDR-266 has. Moreover, in this Northbridge debuts for the first time the new connection to the southbridge, called V-Link, which allows for much higher data transfer rate and frees the PCI bus of the chipset internal communication.
However, the KT266 showed great weakness in the memory speed, so that the KT266A was necessary as a revised version and now the expectations were met in the chipset.
KT333
With the introduction of the new AMD Athlon XP processors with an FSB of 166 MHz, a new chipset was needed, which officially supports this speed. This KT333 also supports PC-2700/DDR-333 as storage. The original KT333 in revisions CD and CE was the last chipset from VIA for Socket A with AGP support 1x/2x-Grafikkarten. The KT333 in the revision CF was a umgelabelter KT400 (but without AGP 8x capability) and could be destroyed by use of AGP 1x/2x-Karten.
KT400 (A)
The KT400 brought contrary to expectations, no increase in the FSB or the memory interface, but was only improved in detail KT333 AGP 8x and 8x V-Link were introduced. Actually it supports PC -3200 for this chipset was planned, but for unknown reasons (probably design errors ) it worked only with a FSB of 133 MHz ( and even there only very slowly ). Only the KT400A increased the memory speed to PC-3200/DDR-400; that was the only difference.
KT600
The KT600 brought the already during KT400 or KT400A expected increase of the FSB to 200 MHz. The direct competitor of the KT600 was the nForce2 Ultra 400 NVIDIA, solid market share lost to VIA, because he offered one, though often only marginally higher speed.
KT880
With the VIA KT880 brought for the first time a North Bridge with Dual -channel memory controller on the market. Otherwise, it does not differ from the KT600. However, the KT880 came too late to the market and hardly reached distribution, whilst in the meantime the AMD K8 processors were established.