Socket A Motherboard advice

[Daikaiju]

After reading the article here about the new Asus VIA KT400 board and the article at THG featuring 4 new KT400 boards, it's pretty clear that the KT400 chipset with PC3200 DDR sucks... which is a huge disappointment to myself and i'm sure many others. I'm currently looking to upgrade my current motherboard and RAM (KT133A w/512meg PC133 SDRAM) and had my sights set on a KT400 board and PC3200 DDR, so now i have no idea what to go for. I noticed that the performance of the KT400 with PC2700 DDR wasn't too bad, only slightly lower than that of a KT333 board, so would this be an option? I really like the features of the KT400, such as SATA, onboard IEEE 1394, USB 2.0 and AGP 8x (not that i will be using AGP 8x any time soon) so i am still leaning towards the KT400. Whichever i go for, it will be faster than the chipset/RAM i have now. So my question is, would it be better to go with the KT400 board with the features i want and use PC2700 DDR, or choose speed over features and go with a KT333 and PC2700?

Thanks in advance...

Chris

PS. I also plan to upgrade my processor to the Barton core 166/333fsb Athlon when they come out in October, so would the KT333 board support them or would i have to go with the KT400 for this processor?

 

[Varun]

It's obvious that the 400MHz RAM isn't really needed for the current Athlon. Still the KT400 is a good chipset, even though a lot of it's memory bandwidth is not used. The Barton coming out in October (hopefully) might have a 166MHz FSB, so the KT400 would have a bit of headroom over that still with PC3200.

I would go with the KT400 because it has the 533MHz Vlink, 8xAGP and is a good performer. Just be sure the get CAS 2 RAM if you want peak performance out of it.

 

[Daikaiju]

Does that mean that the reason for the KT400 boards doing so badly in the two tests i've seen so far is purely down to the PC3200 RAM? I'm certainly not impressed with the fact that you can only use a single PC3200 DIMM on this chipset, and although being able to only use two PC2700 DIMM's isn't exactly great either, i don't plan to use more than two anyway (will be using 512meg DIMMs). No doubt i will be getting CAS 2 RAM (wherever it may be, finding it in Nova Scotia ain't easy). So which KT400 board would be the best one to get? I'm considering the Abit AT7-MAX2 or KD7R, or the Asus A7V8X. With the KD7R not supporting SATA, i think i will be discarding that one. Any suggestions for manufacturer?

It seems a shame that the KT333 is the only VIA chipset in what seems like a long while that seemed to be done right first time, without needing an "A" revision before the performance was up to par. I wonder how long it will be before the KT400A chipset comes along (not that i'll be replacing the KT400 for the KT400A)