Chipset Differences

[ithaca00]

Hello Everyone. I'm building myself a computer for the first time and I had some questions on motherboard chipsets. Right now I'm looking at the ASUS A7V600 with the VIA KT600 north bridge chipset and the ASUS A7N8V Deluxe with the nforce Nvidia 2 SSP (Ultra 400) northbridge chipset.

What are the differences between these two chipsets?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

-ithaca00

:beer:

 

[ethebubbeth]

nforce2 is better than the kt600 in practically every way

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums ithaca00

At this point, KT600's main claim to fame is that it has native support for Serial ATA hard drives, where an nForce2 board currently needs a PCI-based SATA controller tacked on. And KT600 costs a bit less than nForce 2 Ultra 400 generally. If it's paired up with the correct stuff, it can also feature VIA's fancy new Vinyl sound chip, but it doesn't sound like that's very commonly found in actuality.

nForce2 has higher overall performance and supports up to three DDR400 DIMMs at once, not just two. One of nForce2's indisputable claims to fame is that it unlocks most AMD processors (everything with a Thoroughbred core or Barton core) and its PCI bus remains at 33MHz no matter what FSB you pick. So you have many overclocking options, since you can pick multiplier x frontside-bus that you want (for the most part... some multipliers aren't going to be available).

 

[ithaca00]

Thanks for the quick replies everyone. You've just solved one of my larger decisions to make.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yup nForce2 is clearly better but if there's a decent price diff KT600 is actually VERY close. nF2 support AGP/PCI locks which can help o/c'ing but then it's pretty pointless unless you plan to stray above 216/432FSB which has VERY minimal gains over 200/400FSB anyway. nF2 supports Dual Channel DDR which gives it a 5%ish perf boost, it is this which takes it just above the KT600 and there are vers of nF2 without DC-DDR so be careful. Of course you need 2 sticks of RAM to use it so you probably pay 5% more for the priviledge and it does often limit your RAM/FSB upgrade paths too. nVidia certainly have the better sound, VIA Vinyl still isn't implimented yet, nVidia's sound chip can be omitted from some nF2 mobos so again do check if you want good sound. No mobo should have any trouble unlocking TbredB or Barton (TbredA is crappy) because they're already ALWAYS unlocked. Some dumb-a$$ mobos get confused with mults above 12.5x (5bit FID) but I hear that can apply to nF2 as well as VIA chipsets. Some things nF2 really have going for them is consistency, stability, compatibility and more mature drivers, VIA chipsets are often problematic. As said SATA150 is far better on KT600 but I seriously doubt it would impact speed as even ATA100 isn't truly limiting perf. So nForce2 are best but not by a whole lot, price diffs may be small though but do check your mobo has all that you want.