What is so bad about KT266 (non a) ???

[smp]

EDIT:

Thread do-over.

I keep hearing people say that the VIA KT266 chipset is a flop and that it was a bad attempt at a chipset. People seem to like the KT266A however... Please tell me what you know about "bugs" or problems that the older revision had. Oh, and the 266E comes with Audio too, for the same price What else is better about the E?
Thank you.

 

[saltedeggman]

yes it does

 

[Passions]

yes

 

[smp]

Thread do-over bump~

 

[smp]

title do-over bump~

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

The KT266 came well after the AMD 760 but had worse performance. It helped to push DDR into the mainstream, but beyond that it was a pointless chipset. The older southbridge that was paired with it had problems as well. The KT266A was what should have been released by VIA from the beginning. This chipset tightened the memory timings between the synchronized FSB and the memory bus and it can burst twice as many quad-words of data per clock as the orignial KT266. The new northbridge also deepend the memory queues for faster access to buffered data.

Anandtech did a good review of this board here.

 

[LXi]

<<The older southbridge that was paired with it had problems as well.>>

Uh... KT266 and KT266A both used the same VT8233 southbridge. So, you're incorrect. The only problem with the KT266 is that it didn't perform up to expectations, the performance level was behind AMD760 initially, but improved substantially as mobo makers redesigned their board and BIOS, by the time KT266A was announed, the original KT266 has improved to 760's level and even outperforming it in many cases. All in all, the KT266 is not a bad chipset by any means, it's just as stable as KT266A, and it had little incompatibilities, people just hate it 'cause it didn't perform as well.

 

[spazntwich1]

I know I certainly wish VIA had gotten things done correctly on the first go-around. *grumble*

/me writes this from his kt266 mobo.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Yeah, that is correct. I was thinking the original had the 686B on some motherboards, but they were using V-link. The performance of the Northbridge was abhorrent though. In some cases the KT133A surpassed it.

 

[sad]

the main thing is if you try to overclock, USB craps out at 138mhz fsb.