Recently, I've been planning to build a new pc with an upgrade path. I decided on a motherboard based on VIA's KT133A chipset. I'm told that the best match is an Athlon with a 266MHz FSB. Supposedly, these newer Athlons are hard to find. Why? Because they hadn't been made yet [in volume].
Why then didn't AMD introduce the Athlon with a 133/266MHz FSB earlier? The answer provided in articles by some of our favorite hardware review web sites is "...the chipsets didn't support it yet." Not because AMD couldn't!
If you were to find reviews on VIA's chipsets and ask why VIA didn't just bypass the KT133 and move directly to the KT133A, you'd find a similar explanation. "The Athlon 133/266 isn't available yet."
Meanwhile, you and I cannot take our Athlon Thunderbird out from our old KT133 motherboard and place it into our new KT133A motherboard. Now of course, if we could, why would we? Why buy a motherboard that supports 133/266 to install a cpu that only supports 100/200? Result-- we need to buy a new Athlon Thunderbird.
Was the KT133 chipset and Athlons with 100/200 FSB an artificially created plateau?
Does that sound like a marketing conspiracy to you?
Why then didn't AMD introduce the Athlon with a 133/266MHz FSB earlier? The answer provided in articles by some of our favorite hardware review web sites is "...the chipsets didn't support it yet." Not because AMD couldn't!
If you were to find reviews on VIA's chipsets and ask why VIA didn't just bypass the KT133 and move directly to the KT133A, you'd find a similar explanation. "The Athlon 133/266 isn't available yet."
Meanwhile, you and I cannot take our Athlon Thunderbird out from our old KT133 motherboard and place it into our new KT133A motherboard. Now of course, if we could, why would we? Why buy a motherboard that supports 133/266 to install a cpu that only supports 100/200? Result-- we need to buy a new Athlon Thunderbird.
Was the KT133 chipset and Athlons with 100/200 FSB an artificially created plateau?
Does that sound like a marketing conspiracy to you?