The KT133 System

The KT133 Chipset

VIA's KT133 chipset is essentially a Socket A derivative of the older KX133 chipset. With the introduction of two similarly configured chipsets so close to each other, many consumers were upset with VIA and AMD for the snafu. After all, there were no warning signs from AMD concerning incompatibilities with the KX133 chipset and the Thunderbird processor until just prior to the CPU's launch. This left many end users with a brand new KX133 motherboard and limited upgrade options (As we mentioned before, 950MHz and below) in the future.

Since the KX133 chipset was originally to be introduced with the Athlon processor last August, it isn't surprising that problems with high-speed Thunderbird processors were eventually discovered.

In any case, the specs for the KT133 chipset remain the same as KX133. Full PC133 support, AGP 4X compatibility (although the kinks are still being worked out on this one), ATA/66 support (with ATA/100 expected soon), and support for up to 2GB SDRAM.

KT133 System: ABIT KT7-RAID

North Bridge: VT8363
Front side bus: 200MHz
Peak Bandwidth: 1.6GB/sec

Memory Bus: 100/133MHz SDRAM
Peak Bandwidth: 1.0GB/sec
Max Memory: 2.0GB

AGP 4X
Peak Bandwidth: 1.0 GB/sec

South Bridge: VT82C686A I/O controller hub
ATA-66
4 USB ports

For our reference KT133 system, we chose ABIT's KT7-RAID. In gaming tests, we've found it to be a little faster than typical KT133 motherboards, although in synthetic benchmarks, performance is about the same.

In addition, the KT7-RAID is exceptionally stable in Windows 98 and 2000, in ATA/66 mode as well as RAID Level 0. Keep in mind that if you do choose to setup a RAID array, you'll experience the best performance in Windows 2000. On this page we have RAID numbers in Windows 98 versus Windows 2000.