AMD/VIA Marketing Conspiracy???

bupkus

Diamond Member
Nov 25, 2000
3,816
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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?
 

dszd0g

Golden Member
Jun 14, 2000
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It is a blessing in disguise for some users who have been overclocking this whole time. One can drop the multiplier (if one has to) run your 100 DDR FSB Duron/Athlon/Thunderbird at 133 DDR FSB and run it underclocked/overclocked or however you want at the higher bus speed.
 

DABANSHEE

Banned
Dec 8, 1999
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There's absolutelly nothing stoping you from puting an old 100mhz FSB T'bird/Duron into a new KT133A motherboard.

Because the simple fact is that the KT133A cipset supports both a 100mhz fsb & a 133mhz fsb (plus it also supports both a FSB memory bus speed an a FSB+PCI memory bus speed)

So, yes you can stick your old Duron 600 in a KT133A board & run it at its default 6x100 fsb (600mhz), you can also run it an an overclocked 6x133 (800mhz), & you can run it at at its default 600mhz but with a 133mhz FSB just by using a 4.5 multiplyer (4.5x133=600).

So I don't really know what you are complaining about
 

MadRat

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
11,977
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The ATHLONs with higher multipliers will probably do better than lower multipliers. Remember, unlike the Pentium family, Athlons just aren't hamstrung by memory bandwidth. The biggest change in motherboards for the Athlon prior to the 133/266 FSB were in the AGP support, not the memory performance. :)