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A look at four VIA Apollo 133A FC-PGA Motherboards.

BX: two letters that stand for one of Intel’s best computer chip-sets in the recent history. When introduced in 1998, BX based motherboards were the first boards that took advantage of Intel’s latest Pentium II processors with the 'Deschutes' core running at 100MHz. Previously, the orginal Pentium processors ran with a 66 MHz bus speed. No serious competitors were offering superior or similar products at the time. BX remained the top choice for the high end user with its stability and good performance until late 1999.

Features
The Mainboards
  • Apollo 133A Chipset
  • FC-PGA370
  • UDMA/66
  • AGPX4
  • SDRAM PC133 Support
  • ATX Form Factor
  • VT82C596B or VT82C686A south-bridge

http://www.via.com.tw

(+,-) $120USD (AVG)

Not so long ago, we officially touched the official 133MHz FSB world with Intel’s latest Pentiun III CPU’s (B, EB). As the BX platform was never meant to run at Speeds beyond 100MHz a new improved chip-set was needed for several reasons. One main reason was the high 89MHz AGP bus that was pushing the AGP video cards over their limits, resulting in several incompatibility issues with video cards. Of course, the chip giant was already working on a solution. They were also closely working with RAMBUS to adopt RDRAM memory in their upcoming chip-sets, which was claimed to tremendously boost performance compared to SDRAM.

-i810E: A Low End 133MHz Solution...

On April 26, 1999, Intel introduced its i810e chip-set, the very first and last Intel chip that took advantage of SDRAM memory, they have made some headlines all over the place. Unfortunately, this chip was targeted for the low cost market as it included an integrated low cost video solution and no AGP port for further video upgrades. These motherboards were quickly spread in the low cost market, giving no further interest for the end user. They definitely were not considered the best choice to be used with Intel’s upcoming Coppermine Pentium III CPU. From our theory, Intel manufactured these chips under the low cost claim and did not offer further AGP expansion for a reason. Specifically, Intel did not want to disturb the upcoming expensive, rambus enabled 820 chips, which Intel considered as their upcoming high-end solution.

–VIA_133A: Best in class 133MHz support!

VIA, who was finishing work on their latest VIA133A chip, had fallen behind on their release date on their latest Apollo 133A chip-set. In technical terms, Apollo 133A based motherboards feature very similar features to the 820, offering AGPX4 support, and UDMA/66. Of course, that was not it. Via’s latest chip-set was the first VIA platform that took full advantage of PC-133 memory instead of the expensive RDRAM. To all that, it also included the necessary AGP speed regulations to run at 133MHz without putting the AGP based video card out of its limit. 133A based motherboards can also take full advantage of PC-133 memory at speeds inferior to 133MHz FSB. For example, you can use your Pentium III CPU at 100MHz FSB and enable PC-133 Memory support. This results in a reasonable performance boost to users equipped with PC-133 memory.

Two diffeferent flavors of the 133A chipset are available. The differencies are based in their South Bridge. First is the standard VT82C596B south bridge. This type is best known for its lower cost. It features a normal two port USB hub, PC98 power management and a UltraDMA/66 controler. The second is the VT82C686A which features four USB ports, PC99 Power management, AC97 sound support and temperature monitoring tools. At the time of this writing, VIA has just announced that they will be implenting UltraDMA/100 support in their upcoming south bridge.

Via’s Apollo 133A based mainboards have become the best value solution for the new Intel Pentium III (B) CPU’s, especially for the newest B and upcoming EB Pentium processors operating at 133MHz. The BX chip-set running at 133MHz has remained the best performance choice as it continues to perform better than anything else on the market. Unfortunately, its high AGP clock has limited this board for the users with the compatible hardware.







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