The life of the socket A platform is coming to and end. VIA have just released there last Socket A chipset the KT880. The Athlon 64 with its 64-bit architecture has been on the market for a few months and will supersede the Athlon XP in due course. However the Athlon XP is not dead and sales currently still outweigh that of the Athlon 64 by quite a margin. With this in mind its still more than viable to build a PC around the High-end Athlon XP CPU. Even better news is that the release of the Athlon 64 knocks down the prices of the Athlon XP and also the prices of the Socket A motherboards.

We will be looking at some of the most popular Socket A chipsets and comparing them, seeing how they have evolved over the life of the platform. And as the older chipsets and motherboards get cheaper you can have a look at the specifications of each and can see which is right for you, saving you cash when you don't buy technology you don't require.

The Chipsets

We will be looking at 5 different chipsets in this article, 2 from VIA technologies, the KT600 and the KT880. 2 from Nvidia, the Nforce 2 400 and the Nforce 2 ultra 400 and finally 1 from SiS, the SiS748. These chipsets are mainly from the back end of the socket A platforms life, we chose these not because the earlier ones did not introduce new and important technologies to the platform, but simply because we want you to still be able to buy the products we are taking a look at., Unfortunately with the pace that PC component technology moves at, many of the earlier products are no longer for sale even only a couple of years after they were released.

The KT600 is by VIA technologies, This chipset was an upgrade from the KT400 and KT400a. The main upgrade feature of the KT600 was the move up to support the Athlon XP Barton's with there 400Mhz Front Side Bus. Serial ATA was also introduced into this chipset with it supporting 2 Serial ATA devices, Also an extra SATAlite™ controller allowed motherboard manufacturers to offer an extra 2 Serial ATA device support. This however was an optional feature which some manufacturers took up and others didn't. It was early days for Serial ATA when this chipset was first released so 2 Serial ATA devices was probably a lot more than most people had.

The KT600 also supported DDR400 memory, although its predecessor the KT400 also supported this memory, it lay on dodgy ground as the DDR400 standard wasn't concrete. DDR400 is now widely supported however most motherboards come with a supported memory list for DDR400 manufacturers. These memory sticks have been tried and tested. If you look on your motherboard manufacturers website, most will have a list of the tested DDR400 memory modules.

Motherboards for the KT600 Chipset

The KT880 is the last in a long line of chipsets from VIA for the Athlon XP platform. It is reported that this will be the last ever chipset made for the ever ageing platform. The KT880 was created to finally give the Athlon XP access to dual channel DDR memory., Two separate DDR memory controllers allow for twice the data transfer rate from the main memory. The Pentium 4 already had access to this technology and so it was time that the same was true was the Athlon XP.

The KT880 chipset also increased the maximum amount of supported memory to 8Gb from the previous 4Gb that the KT600 provided. physically most of the motherboards don't have enough slots to support 8Gb of memory at this time as well as the lack of 2Gb+ memory modules available.

Motherboards for the KT880 Chipset

The Nforce 2 was created by Nvidia, the Nforce was a force to be reckoned with in the chipset market when it first came out. Nvidia came out with all guns blazing with its Nforce range. It was obvious that the chipset was to go with the companies high end graphics cards of the time. The chipset did however come with a Geforce 4 MX card onboard just in case you were not buying a top of the range card. If that's the level of graphics that you are after then having it onboard could save you a fair few quid.

The Nforce 2 400 is older than both of the featured via chipsets and as such has some technology which is outdated however when you look at the comparison you will see that's its not that far behind and at the same time see why this chipset was such a step forward when it first hit the market.

The was a standard Nforce 2, this chipset was virtually identical to the Nforce 2 400, the 400 version was upgraded to support the new Athlon XP Barton CPU's with the 400Mhz FSB and the DDR400 DIMM's

The Ultra Version of the Nforce 2 400 has the ability of Dual channel DDR memory. A separate memory controller effectively doubles the peak memory transfer rate.

Motherboards for the Nforce 2 400 and Nforce 2 400 Ultra

SiS748 - Many people forget the likes of SiS when they look at chipsets. The SiS chipsets in the past have been a very good alternative to the bigger names. This chipset offers most of the features needed for a top spec system, including DDR400 and FSB400 support.

Motherboards for the SiS748 Chipset

Next >> Comparing the Chipsets