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As
another season comes upon us and another new
chipset from VIA technologies is released into
the market. It seems like only yesterday
(OK, January) that we were building our latest
powerhouses based on the KT266A chipset.
Then along came the KT333, but it brought only a
minor performance improvement. Originally
touted as having DDR400 as well as AGP 8x
support, the KT400 was much anticipated as the
next best thing since sliced bread, for the
Athlon. Early
on, however, VIA dropped the DDR400 support, due
to compatibility and performance issues.
Also, from what we have seen, AGP 8X is not
bringing the great performance boost we had hoped
for.
Due to
increased competition however, motherboard companies
were quick to incorporate KT400 chipsets into
their new releases, but are they really ready
for the market? Today we match up two
motherboards based on the VIA KT400, the Soyo
SY-KT400 Dragon Ultra and the Shuttle AK37GTR.
Both boards come packed with a slew of features
as well as colored PCBs, catering to the
performance nuts, as well as being aesthetically
pleasing to the modding crowd.
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| Specifications / Features |
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Let's bring out the
contenders! |
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Soyo SY-KT400
Dragon Ultra
CPU
AMD Athlon and Duron Processors with 200/266
FSB
AMD Athlon XP
Processors with 266/333 FSB
Chipset
VIA KT400 North Bridge
VIA VT8235 South Bridge
Memory
Three DDR 2.5V DIMM sockets
supporting up to 3GB DDR333/266/200 or 2GB DDR400
IDE
Two PCI bus-mastering IDE ports supporting
up to PIO mode 5
and Ultra DMA 66/100/133
Two IDE channels for onboard RAID 0/1/0+1
Optional serial ATA support through riser
card
Audio
On board CMI8738 audio chip providing
6-channel sound
Supports optical and S/PDIF output
System BIOS
2Mbyte AWARD
BIOS with ACPI function
Expansion
Slots
One
8X/4X AGP 1.5V (Accelerated Graphics Port) universal
slot
Five PCI v2.2 32-bit Bus mastering PCI slots
LAN
Davicom DM9161 10/100
Internal I/O
Connectors
Floppy port supporting 1.2/1.44/2.88MB FD
Two RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART
compatible)
Parallel printer port supporting SPP/EPP/ECP mode
IrDA connector
6 USB 2.0 ports (2 Rear/4 Front)
Back Panel I/O
Two PS/2
connectors (keyboard and mouse)
Two 9-pin Serial port
One 25-pin SPP/ECP/EPP Parallel port
Two USB 2.0 ports
3
Audio connectors (Line-out, Line-in, Mic-in)
One RJ45 LAN port
One Game port
Miscellaneous
ATX form factor
30.5 cm x 24.5 cm (12" x 9.6")
Six mounting holes
Package
Contents
Soyo SY-KT400 Motherboard
Drivers and Utilities CD
8-in-1 CD including Norton Anti-Virus 2002,
Ghost 2002, Adobe ActiveShare, Acrobat
Reader, WinDVD 2000,
and trials of AutoSave and Imagemore
Installation Manual
S/PDIF audio bracket
Sigma Box with Compact Flash/Smart Media
slots
and two front USB 2.0 ports
Three
ATA 133 IDE Cables
Floppy Cable
I/O shield
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Shuttle
AK37GTR
CPU
AMD Athlon and Duron Processors with 200/266
FSB
AMD Athlon XP
Processors with 266 FSB
Chipset
VIA KT400 North Bridge
VIA VT8235 South Bridge
Memory
Four DDR 2.5V DIMM sockets
supporting up to 4GB
DDR400/333/266/200
IDE
Two PCI bus-mastering IDE ports supporting
up to PIO mode 5
and Ultra DMA 66/100/133
Two IDE channels from Highpoint 372 for
onboard RAID 0/1/0+1
Two serial ATA ports using onboard Marvell
88i8030 Serial ATA bridge
with RAID 0/1 support
Audio
On board Realtek 650 audio chip providing
6-channel sound
Supports Digital S/PDIF input/output
System BIOS
2Mbyte AWARD
BIOS with ACPI function
Expansion
Slots
One
8X/4X/2X AGP 1.5V (Accelerated Graphics Port) universal
slot
Five PCI v2.2 32-bit Bus mastering PCI slots
LAN
LAN controller VT6103
Internal I/O
Connectors
Floppy port supporting 1.2/1.44/2.88MB FD
Two RS-232 serial ports (16550 UART
compatible)
Parallel printer port supporting SPP/EPP/ECP mode
6 USB 2.0 ports (4 Rear/2 Front)
Back Panel I/O
Two PS/2
connectors (keyboard and mouse)
Two 9-pin Serial port
One 25-pin SPP/ECP/EPP Parallel port
Two USB 2.0 ports
3
Audio connectors (Line-out, Line-in, Mic-in)
One RJ45 LAN port
One Game port
Miscellaneous
ATX form factor
30.5 cm x 24.5 cm (12" x 9.6")
Six mounting holes
Package
Contents
Shuttle AK37GTR
Motherboard
Drivers and Utilities CD
Installation Manual
HPT 372 Raid Administrator's Manual
Audio bracket for Central and Bass out
1 bracket with additional 2 USB 2.0 ports
Two
ATA 133 IDE Cables
One serial ATA cable
Floppy Cable
I/O shield
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A brief description of the VIA KT400 Chipset:
The block diagram for the
KT400 chipset, hasn't changed much versus the KT333 of
old. However, there are a few new enhancements
which should give the chipset a new set of legs for
the current generation of Athlons as well as next
generation graphics cards. Unfortunately, the
chipset name is a little misleading in that the
chipset doesn't actually officially support DDR400
speeds. However, that doesn't stop motherboard
manufacturers from offering the setting in their BIOS.
The real question is, does this setting offer any real
appreciable performance improvements? We'll
delve into that later in this article.
Beyond the memory bus, the
KT400 boasts AGP8X support for next generation
graphics and a whole host of the latest interface
technologies, including USB 2.0. Also, VIA's
V-Link Southbridge/Northbridge Bus, has been cranked
up a bit to reach 533MB/sec bandwidth levels, which
should theoretically help with disk IO performance a bit as well.
Key
Features of the KT400:
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Supports AMD Athlon XP
processors
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200/266/333 FSB settings
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AGP 2x/4x/8x support
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Support for up to 4GB
DDR200/266/333 DDR SDRAM
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8x V-link 533MB/s
bandwidth interconnect
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Integrated 6-channel audio
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Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
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Support for ATA
33/66/100/133 drives
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USB 2.0 Support
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The
boards, a closer look...
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