DDR not for gaming?

[Tomi]

I read an article in Anandtech.com about the VIA KT266 chipset:

We only included one gaming test in this comparison simply because the boards locked up too much in the rest of our tests and the standings remain relatively similar across the other tests as well. We will provide a more thorough set of benchmarks (through our usual test suite) once boards mature.
http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1455&p=11

They are talking about the DDR-ChipSets of AMD, VIA... for gaming. Only Q3 in low resolution ran well.

What do Anandtech.com exactly say? "Do not buy an DDR Board for gaming!!"

 

[SilverBack]

I have an MSI K7T266 Pro and a VisionTek GF3.
I have 512 MB of Crucial PC2100 ram.
The system runs excellent in games.
As compared to my Abit KT7a the FPS in games is 5% to 7% faster up to the limitation of the video card.

 

[Renob]

The DDR system I have now is the MOST stable system I have ever had. Tha article is ca ca.

 

[BurntKooshie]

It's also from April. Times change. Give it a break.

 

[Hender]

The article is outdated. Since the initial introduction of the KT266 chipset, the MB manufacturers have re-engineered their boards and updated the BIOS, and there are few if any problems left there. I'm usually a very picky buyer, but after reading a lot of articles talking about the new KT266 boards, I decided that there it was worth buying, so I piked up an AK31 R2 this past weekend. Of course, that *I* bought one may not be enough for you, but search around for new reviews of KT266 boards and they will be ranked higher than when they were initially released.

As for DDR on the whole not being for games, was that part of your question, too? Look at any review of any AMD CPU, or any video card, and chances are it's running on a DDR board beacause AMD+DDR has beens hown to edge out Pentium 4's by a nose, sometimes more, in many cases. DDR-SDRAM will give you a 5-10% boost on today's applications over regular SDRAM, so there's no sense in avoiding it.

 

[AppleTalking]

That article was specifically referring to the earlier versions of the KT266 chipset, which were notoriously slow and unstable. Via has since worked with motherboard manufacturers to correct the problems, and now better KT266 boards are now starting to appear on the market. One example is the Shuttle AK31 Rev 2 board that another poster mentioned.

As for the AMD 760 chipset, that has always been stable and fast. I have an Epox 8K7A with an Athlon 1.2GHz., 256MB of PC2100 from Crucial, and a 3D Prophet 4500 card and it rocks in games.

Nick

 

[NelsonMuntz]

That article is a few months old now and the DDR chipsets have matured. Check here for a newer review of some DDR boards complete with gaming benchmarks.