| It
looks as if AMD is here to stay with their X86
processor offering. Finally there is a
viable and worthy opponent to the all mighty
Intel. This year AMD is giving Intel a run
for their money with a host of processors that
compete head to head in every market segment that
Intel's PC product line plays. The AMD Duron
Processor is their answer to the Intel Celeron.
By the way, have you ever thought about the "Duron"
name? "DuRON"... "CeleRON",
you can bet that was intentional. In any
event, the Duron boasts 192K of on chip cache,
128K Level 1 and 64K L2. With the
integration of this full speed on chip cache,
AMD's "Spitfire" core is well equipped
to compete not only with Celerons but Coppermine
Processors as well.
Durons
in stock now at MicroX-Press!
Beyond
that, the Duron's 200MHz. (100MHz. DDR) EV6 System
Bus has a serious bandwidth advantage over the
Celeron . We aren't going into a lot of detail
with respect to the Duron specifications, you can
reference this
AMD side by side comparison to the Celeron, if
you would like more detail. Rather, this is
a closer look at the current Motherboard Platform
that supports the Duron, the VIA
Apollo KT133 chipset and a motherboard that is
designed around it, the Gigabyte GA-7ZM.
 |
| Specifications
and Features Of The Gigabyte GA-7ZM |
| Micro
ATX Economy - Duron Performance |
|
(click
for full view)
PROCESSOR
AMD? Athlon? /Duron? (K7) Socket A
processor (256K/64K 2nd cache on die)
Supports 500MHz ~ 1GHz and faster
100/110*/115*/120*/124*/133* MHz FSB
AUTO detect CPU voltage
CHIPSET
VIA VT8363 (KT133) Memory/AGP/PCI
Controller
VIA VT82C686A PCI Super-I/O Integrated
Peripheral Controller
AC97 codec
MEMORY
3 168-pin DIMM sockets
Supports PC-100 / PC-133 SDRAM and VCM
SDRAM
Supports up to 1.5GB DRAM
Supports only 3.3V SDRAM DIMM
SLOTS
1 x AMR (Audio Modem Riser) slot
(Inversely AMR card)
1 x AGP slot supports 4X mode & AGP
2.0 compliant
3 x PCI slots support 33MHz & PCI 2.2
compliant
| I/O
2 x Ultra DMA 33/66 bus master IDE ports
on board
1 x FDD, 2 x COM, 1 x LPT, PS/2 keyboard,
PS/2 Mouse on board
1 x Joystick, 1 x Line-in, 1 x Line-out, 1
x MIC on board
2 x USB ports on board
2 x USB ports by cable (optional
accessory)
IrDA TX / RX header ready
POWER
ATX power connector
Power-on by LAN, RTC, Modem & switch
Power-off by Windows® 95/98/2000 Shut
down & Switch
Stop CPU fan during entering suspend mode
FORM FACTOR
Micro ATX , 4 layer PCB (24.4 X 21.0cm)
H/W MONITORING
CPU/System fan revolution detect
CPU/System temperature detect
System voltage detect (Vcore,VDD ,Vcc,+12V)
CPU overheat shutdown detect
OTHER FEATURES
Support Wake-On-LAN (WOL)
Support Internal/External modem ring on
Support USB K/B or mouse wake up from S3
Includes 3 fan power connectors
Poly fuse for keyboard over-current
protection
Support STR (Suspend-To-RAM) function |
Let's
look at the obvious. This is a "Socket
A" board supporting Durons and Thunderbird
Athlons (also Socket A with on die cache)
only. The VIA Apollo KT133 chipset that is
driving this board has all of the exact same
features as the VIA
KX133 Slot A variety only it is setup to
support the Socket A 462 pin PGA AMD
processors.
In
addition, you get an ATA66 Controller, PC133
Memory support, AGP4X, on board sound (with the
addition of an AC97 Audio Codec) and health
monitoring functions. Yes, this is a
"Micro ATX" board
and while many of the HotHardware Elite may not be
so high on the number of PCI slots (only 3), with
its full list of features, this board could easily
be the foundation of a budget base system that
packs a wallop in performance.
You'll
also notice that the board has several selectable
Front Side Bus Speeds for over-clocking.
There is no multiplier setting however and no
voltage adjustments to help your cause. In
addition, the FSB is set via a dip switch on the
board itself versus the BIOS menu adjustments we
have come accustomed to. However, Gigabyte
has a solution for this.
"Easy
Tune III" makes its debute
|
