VIA KT400A. *3-31-03 UPDATE*

[First]

That's right, KT400A is coming and AnandTech will obviously have extensive coverage. It looks like Gigabyte will be first out of the gate, but we won't be getting a sample until after the Chinese New Year. Anyway, we'll let you know what's happening with KT400A boards as soon as we receive information about them.

This is now the official KT400A thread, so post your questions and requests here. Enjoy!

Check out the first part of our extensive KT400A coverage here.

Our Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra (KT400A) review can be found here.

3-31-03 UDPATE: The Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra (KT400A) review is up ^

Soltek's KT400A board is currently doing the rounds, and a review should be up in a few days.

I'm still waiting to get confirmation on exactly when Soyo and ASUS will ship me their KT400A boards, if at all.

 

[magomago]

I wonder how good KT400a will be compared with the nforce2.

Last time VIA got "lucky" due to the real late arrival of the first nfoce, so it'll be interesting this time to see what happens since Ncidia got the headstart

 

[touchmyichi]

A few things I would like to know-

1. I heard there was no dual ddr, I was wondering if this is true.
2. what is the highest fsb on the gigabye?
3. Has the onboard audio solutions improved at all, since of the competition of nforce 2.

 

[DoubleL]

It would surprise me if the KT400A didn't beat the nforce2 by quit a bit since I think the KT400 with the upgraded drivers and the nforce2 are to close to call right now and the KT400 is so much easier to set up,

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, food for thought:

• Have they fixed the problem described here? This burned me with my A7V333-RAID and my SCSI controller.
• How does the north-to-south bandwidth compare to SiS MuTIOL and nForce2?
• On the test board, what features, if any, are PCI devices rather than native to the southbridge
• People seem disappointed with the SATA RAID that is popping up on AMD and Intel boards lately. They often have PATA drives they want to use, and SATA is not on the market, causing frustration. Any signs that the test board and/or other KT400A boards have PATA RAID will be greeted with enthusiasm by the IDE-RAID folks.
• Can the AGP and PCI buses be locked to spec while FSB is varied independently?
• Does the test board take oversized bolt-down heatsinks such as the Alpha PAL8045 and Swiftech MCX-462?
• How does the latency of the memory controller compare to KT333, KT400, SiS735 or any other competitors you have on hand at that point (I'm thinking back to the nForce2 Performance Preview
• When will they be on the market and how will they be priced relative to KT400 (same, higher, lower?)

*brain empty*

 

[Soulkeeper]

*1) I'm curious about fsb overclocking above 200mhz (please use corsair xms memory and go as high as possible)
*2) how high of a PCI divider, or is there a PCI/AGP lock (fingers crossed)
*3) compare to a kt400 at the same fsb/mem clock to see if there are memory controller improvements in the chipset
*4) compare against the nforce2
5) integrated sata ?? probably not....
6) I wanna know what voltage options are offered for any board you review (the more options the better .5v increments for vcore up to 2v or more is nice anything else sucks, also if there is no vmem please cuss for me), you usually do this anyways I think
7) your general impressions
8) maybe the performance of the ide controller if you got nothing better to do..
9) also I agree with mechBgon, isolate the V-link and see if you can find a way to compare it to SIS and Nvidia's solutions
*10) see if the agp 8x controller has been improved possibly explaining the shortcomings of agp 8x thus far

*most important

thanks,
sterling

 

[Bovinicus]

There are a few things that the KT400A really needs to compete for the enthusiast crowd. PCI/AGP lock is a must for the overclocking branch. Lots of onboard features are nice, but only for those building entirely new systems; I like a stand alone soundcard, especially when I have already purchased one. Onboard NICs are a nice commodity too. Also, the performance needs to be stepped up to nForce levels. VIA has a chance to compete, but the nForce2 is much better than the original nForce compared to competitors this time around.

 

[TourGuide]

What processors current and future will be supported?

 

[konichiwa]

Any word on when we'll be seeing firs reviews and/or retail boards? I was about to plunk down for an Nforce2 but with 400A so close (or seeming so close? If its more than a month I'm just going for an nf2) I may have to wait.

 

[KingofFah]

How about some OCZ El as well?
HEXUS Conclusion (read the other pages too)
Corsair XMS 3500
OCZ EL-3500

OCZ has a bad reputation.

 

[DrPara]

any ETA on this review ?

oh boy,oh boy ...

 

[Jaw]

I thought the PCI latency bug was fixed with the 8235 southbridge??

The northbridge/southbrige link for the current KT400 is 533mb/sec - which is comparable to SiS's, isn't it? Not sure about nvidia's. I doubt anyone needs more than 533mb/sec though.

 

[Tab]

1)Onboard sound
2) PCI/AGP Lock
3) Max FSB
4)Max DDR Speed Offically supported?
5)Int. S-ATA and does it make a difference?

 

[mrEvil]

I doubt anyone needs more than 533mb/sec though.

Funny, Bill Gates doubted anyone needed more than 640k at one time also.....sorry, just had to throw that out there. Intel has already announced their intentions for an 800mb chipset, so 533 is old news already.

Food for thought...

 

[KingofFah]

Whatever became of PCI-X? The Kt400A will have 64/66 PCI?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Jaw
I thought the PCI latency bug was fixed with the 8235 southbridge??

The northbridge/southbrige link for the current KT400 is 533mb/sec - which is comparable to SiS's, isn't it? Not sure about nvidia's. I doubt anyone needs more than 533mb/sec though.

It's about half of SiS's and 70% of nVidia's. With more and more stuff being integrated into the southbridges these days instead of getting tacked onto the PCI bus, it's of potential interest to know if they've got a bottleneck at all. Welcome to the Forums, by the way

 

[Jaw]

Intel has already announced their intentions for an 800mb chipset, so 533 is old news already.

I'm talking about northbridge to southbridge bandwidth, not front-side bus.

it's about half of SiS's and 70% of nVidia's. With more and more stuff being integrated into the southbridges these days instead of getting tacked onto the PCI bus

I severly doubt it's being utilized fully at all. I once saw a typical southbridge's bandwidth added up and it was nowhere near even the 266mb/sec of the first gen v-link or intel's hub link. Consider that even though these southbridges are boasting ATA100/ATA133 - no hard drive will utilize that ... I always find it funny how companies like Maxtor inflate their specifications by throwing ATA133 at everyone, while completely ignoring that their drives could never saturate an ATA133 channel, even if you had two of them on the channel. However, changes to stuff like gigabit lan and USB 2.0 probably do create more need for bandwidth for the southbridge. It is, worth noting, that gigabit ethernet for most typical users will never see it's max potential due to the fact that tryin to get 110+mb/sec ((1 gigabit / 8) - overhead) off a hard drive is next to impossible at a sustained rate even for top-end SCSIs.

Welcome to the Forums, by the way

ty

 

[Hauk]

I watched The Fast and the Furious the other day (in agony) with my girlfriend's son. What fools I thought, spending all that damn money tricking out cars to make them go faster than the next guys.

Later that evening, I went back and popped in my new Corsair XMS PC3500 stick, and smiled at my benchmarks.

Fast women, fast cars, and fast framerates.

WHEN WILL IT END?!?

 

[Peter]

mechBgon, the PCI performance issue is just a question of BIOS and/or chipset drivers setting the PCI arbiter engine to a strategy that allows for good throughput. This has been discussed, chewed, spit back out and solved. It hasn't been a chipset hardware problem anyway. With a recent BIOS or, if none available, VIA's PCI performance patch installed, even the oldest VIA chipsets exhibit normal PCI performance right up there with the others.

 

[Megatomic]

I can't wait for these reviews to come out. I intentionally stayed off of the nForce2 in anticipation of the KT400A boards - hoping that parallel IDE RAID will not be forgotten on this family of motherboards. It's too bad VIA decided against dual channel DDR, especially if they were able to make it worthwhile.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

How about onboard sound? Is Via addressing the sound disparity between its offerings and nVidias?

 

[Peter]

The chipsets are (and always have been) ready ... it's in the choice of codec, and yes, there are six-channel codecs with digital I/O available right there, from VIA themselves, Realtek and C-Media. It's up to the board makers to put something decent on, not just basic stereo. Same for the analog sound quality - it's in the board design, not in the chipset.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Specifically I was wondering if Via was pushing their Envy chip... looks to rival pricier offerings...

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Peter
mechBgon, the PCI performance issue is just a question of BIOS and/or chipset drivers setting the PCI arbiter engine to a strategy that allows for good throughput. This has been discussed, chewed, spit back out and solved. It hasn't been a chipset hardware problem anyway. With a recent BIOS or, if none available, VIA's PCI performance patch installed, even the oldest VIA chipsets exhibit normal PCI performance right up there with the others.

Peter, I'll try it again sometime, but it's not like I didn't try everything under the sun already. With the PCI-based USB 2.0 controller enabled, peak SCSI-to-PCI throughput was a dismal 49Mb/sec. With the USB 2.0 disabled, it was still only 72Mb/sec. VIA patches, BIOS updates, altered PCI-latency settings, different drivers, different PCI slots... name something you think I haven't tried yet.

Considering that nForce classic and nForce2 can reach throughput up to 120Mb/sec, it will be merely an academic pursuit, but one of these days I'll revisit it for your (and my) curiosity.

 

[RM1]

Can't wait for the review. It's always like this, and it is good for the competition.....coming out with a better (hopefully) product that the rivals.

I read on these thread replies about some sound quality (on-board / external ?) issue with the KT400 chip. Anywhere I can find the literature or can someone explain what it is? Thanks.