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HardwareZone's 10th Anniversary: The Y2K Era

The Motherboard Evolution in Y2K

The Motherboard Evolution in Y2K

  • With the Athlon proving to be an able competitor to the Pentium III, manufacturers were soon jumping onto the K7 bandwagon. However, a major stumbling block to the adoption of the Athlon was the patchy performance of AMD's own reference 'Irongate' chipset, particularly when it came to its AGP performance. Fortunately, AMD could count on VIA to help them out here, as the VIA KX133 chipset turned out to be a very competent complement to the Athlon.

With support for PC-133 SDRAM memory (2GB max), AGP 4x and ATA66, this was a VIA chipset that brought parity in features to what Intel was offering with its newer i820. Except for the fact that the i820 was using RDRAM and that costed a bomb then. Instantly, Athlon users were drawn to this chipset and we saw quite a few of these boards in that year.

 3D performance took a big step forward on the AMD platform with the introduction of the VIA KX133. Our results only confirmed this.

One of the earlier ones we saw was the AOpen AK72 and while the board itself was only an average performer and lacking in the overclocking department, "3D graphics performance will soar for the first time for AMD K7 CPUs" and that was the main grouse users had with AMD's reference chipset.

 abit's SoftMenu III allowed the selection of FSB settings in increments of 1MHz, giving enthusiasts greater control over their overclocking. It also supported changing of CPU core voltages.

  • Another notable board based on the KX133 chipset came from abit and it was a very feature packed board known as the KA7 , equipped with up to 6 PCI and 4 DIMM slots. The usual abit enthusiast oriented features like jumperless, SoftMenu III, extra fan connectors and thermal probes contrived to make it a complete package for the AMD enthusiast.
  • VIA was to modify its KX133 chipset following changes by AMD to its EV6 bus, resulting in the KT133 and by the middle of the year, this newer chipset was found in a majority of AMD motherboards.
  • VIA was not content just to cater to the AMD community. Intel's i820 chipset was proving to be too big an investment for the mainstream users who were content to remain on SDRAM. It was another opportunity for a third party to step in and VIA's Apollo Pro 133A chipset was exactly what users were looking for. Current features like ATA66 and PC-133 SDRAM support, with a 133MHz FSB and with AC-97 onboard audio support, this was a chipset for users on the Pentium III platform and Socket 370/Slot-1 solutions.

An example of this chipset that we saw in 2000 was the abit VT6X4 and it was "a pretty good board, considering its stability and performance, as compared to other VIA based boards around." A more extreme version of this chipset was conjured by DFI, which managed to support both Slot-1 and Socket 370 processors on the same board. "Part of a new series of boards from DFI which is dubbed as the 'Twin-Series' ... this is really a one of a kind motherboard" that has to be seen to be believed.

  • Realizing that they needed another chipset for the SDRAM crowd, Intel came up with the i815 chipset. Enthusiasts were hopeful that this would be a proper successor to the 440BX and the specifications seemed promising. There was AGP 4x, PC-133 SDRAM and ATA/66/100 support and surprisingly, an integrated graphics core. However, this chipset cost much more than VIA's solutions and the company would continue to refine this chipset the next year.
  • The first Pentium 4 chips based on the Willamette would be released in November 2000. Intel had realized it needed a new micro-architecture to match the K7 and the Pentium 4 and its NetBurst micro-architecture was its answer. However, this spelled a new Socket 423 for the new processors and this new format would be a short-lived one that was soon replaced the next year by Socket 478. Meanwhile, the Pentium 4 continued to rely on RDRAM and the performance of these early cores were disappointing. 2000 was a year that Intel was keen to forget and move on.

 

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