Over the past VIA has claimed significance dominance over nVidia in
the mainboard arena, especially in the AMD platform. However, ever
since nVidia came out with the nForce2 chipset VIA didn't have a good
answer to compete back with this new chipset. Recently VIA answered
back with the introduction of the KT400A chipset, however that wasn't
long lived since everyone understood that this was merely a bridging
platform to the KT 600, which officially supported 400MHz FSB.
The KT 600 chipset has a number of significant improvements from
its older counterpart. The biggest selling point for this new chipset
is its 400 MHz FSB support. Even though the KT400A did offer a 400MHz
support most boards that made it to the market showed numerous instability
issues working at this high frequency. With official support for 400MHz
FSB in the new chipset we can be assured that these problems have
been dealt with.
Furthermore the memory architecture has been upgraded to a "FastStream64"
Memory Controller technology. As VIA says this'll reduce the memory
bandwidth problems that surrounded the KT400 chipset.
All KT600 boards will come equipped with a VT8237 south bridge. This
is claimed to be one of the most advanced South Bridges available
on today's market. It features the first ever SATA( Serial ATA)/RAID
controller integrated into the system itself. The VT8237 supports
RAID 0, 1 and 0 + 1 giving users good support for RAID configurations.
In addition it supports up to four parallel ATA 133 devices giving
a wide range of flexibility for mainstream or value conscious buyers.
The south bridge also supports up to 8 USB 2.0 ports which is an increase
of two ports from the KT400 chipset.
Below is a comparison diagram between the new KT600 chipset and the
KT400A chipset.
Features
VIA Apollo
KT600
VIA Apollo
KT400A
North Bridge
Processor Support
AMD Athlon™ XP
AMD Athlon™ XP
Front Side Bus
266/333/400MHz
266/333MHz
Memory Bus
266/333/400MHz
266/333/400MHz
AGP Support
AGP4X/8X
AGP4X/8X
Memory Type
DDR266/333/400
DDR266/333/400
Max. Memory
4.0GB
4.0GB
South Bridge
VT8237
VT8235CE
North/South Bridge
Link
8X V-Link (533MB/sec)
8X V-Link (533MB/sec)
Integrated Audio
VIA Vinyl Six-TRAC six- channel AC'97
audio
VIA Vinyl Six-TRAC six- channel AC'97
audio
Integrated Modem
MC'97
MC'97
Integrated Network
Controller
VIA MAC 10/100 Ethernet
VIA MAC 10/100 Ethernet
PCI Devices/Slots
6 slots
6 slots
IDE
Dual Channel Serial ATA directly
supports two SATA devices SATAlite™ interface expands support
for two additional SATA devices through optional external Serial
ATA PHY Dual Channel Parallel ATA (up to 4 devices)
Parallel ATA (up to 4 devices)
VIA RAID
RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1Supports
SATA and ATA-133 standards
USB
8 ports
6 ports
Super I/O
LPC Super I/O
LPC Super I/O
IO APIC
Yes
Yes
Power Management
ACPI/APM/PCI/PM
Key Features ·
Supports full range of AMD Athlon™ XP processors
266/333/400MHz FSB settings
Supports up to 4.0GB DDR266/333/400 SDRAM
Support for AGP 4X/8X
8X V-Link 533MB/s high bandwidth North/South Bridge interconnect
Integrated VIA Vinyl™ Six-TRAC six-channel AC'97 audio
Serial ATA support for up to 4 devices
RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1 support, including Disk Striping
and Disk Mirroring
VIA RAID Software Configuration Program (supports Windows® & Linux)
Parallel ATA 33/66/100/133 support for up to 4 devices
Support for up to 8 USB 2.0/USB 1.1 ports, UHCI compliant
Integrated MC'97 Modem
Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet MAC
Advanced power management capabilities including ACPI/OnNow
