VIA

The Via Booth

VIA's display was quite large, with a stage up front for product demonstrations. While I wasn't able to catch the entire show, while glancing over I saw performers playing what appeared to be Twister. While I'm not sure how Twister applies to chipsets, there always seemed to be a large crowd gathered around the VIA booth during their presentations, so they must have been somewhat effective. (Either that or a lot more people play Twister than I originally thought!) In any case, VIA had a lot to display at their booth, but the products receiving the most fanfare at the VIA booth were without a doubt the Apollo KX133 and Apollo Pro133A chipsets. Since most of our readers are using motherboards based on the BX-chipset, I'll start with the Apollo Pro133A first.

Apollo Pro133A

Building on the experience gained from their last Slot 1 chipset the Apollo Pro133, VIA knew their next product would have to offer something unique over Intel's 820. VIA's Apollo Pro 133A is a 2-chip solution, with a VT82C694X North Bridge and the VT82C596B South Bridge. Here's a quick look at the Apollo Pro 133A specifications:

• 66/100/133MHz front-side bus
• 66/100/133MHz Memory Support
• 2.0 GB Max Memory
• PC66/100/133, VD SDRAM, EDO RAM Memory Types Supported
• 4 Max DIMM's
• 2 USB Ports
• ACPI/OnNow Support
• Hardware Monitoring
• AGP 2X/4X Support
• ATA-33/66
• 3.13GB Total Bandwidth
• Advanced mobile power management and clock stop features
• PC98/99 compliant
• Supports Intel's Pentium III, Pentium II, Celeron, and upcoming Cyrix Slot 1/Socket 370 processors

Looking over the specs, the Apollo Pro133A offers some features lacking in Intel's 820 chipset, most notably the ability to use more memory - the 820 has a 1GB memory limitation. Unfortunately, the Apollo Pro133A lacks support for Rambus RDRAM and the added peak bandwidth it offers over PC133 SDRAM. Considering the poor market acceptance RDRAM has received to date and its high costs, it's a little too early to jump on the RDRAM bandwagon. For this reason, perhaps VIA made the right choice in passing up RDRAM licensing for its Pro133A chipset.

VIA's booth displayed over 20 motherboards powered by the Apollo Pro133A from well-known manufacturers such as Abit, Aopen, FIC, Gigabyte, Shuttle, Soyo, and Tyan. We're a little uncertain of the exact model numbers of these Pro133A-based motherboards, as many of the model names given by VIA don't match up with product literature from the given motherboard companies. Soyo in particular will be making a product based on this chipset, the 6VCA and 7VCA. Both motherboards will ship with a 5/1 PCI/ISA configuration, the ATX form factor, and 3 DIMM's for memory. The only difference between the two motherboards is the interface, with the 6VCA based on the Slot 1 interface and the 7VCA on the Socket370 interface.

For the low-cost/mobile market, VIA was demonstrating the Apollo Promedia. Compatible with Intel Celerons, Pentium IIs, and Pentium IIIs, the Apollo Promedia supports ATA-33/66, front-side bus settings of 66 and 100MHz, and comes with integrated audio and video. As a FiringSquad reader, I'm sure you're not interested in hearing more about the Promedia chipset, so I'll move on to VIA's other interesting chipset, the KX133.