Techseekers.net has looked at the new KT600 chipset from VIA in the guise of a Gigabyte board: the GA-7VT600-L. They compare it to the Epox 8RDA3+, ABIT NF7-S, Gigabyte GA-7NNXP and the Intel IC7-G. They also compare it to the KT400 chipset to see what performance improvements have been made. To overclock the board to 200MHz FSB with a 166MHz Processor, a modification had to be made to the board. Interesting read.
Performance is good at both 166MHz and 200MHz but just not good enough to beat the nForce2. There is a definite improvement over the KT400 range and is evident in games and memory throughput. The fact that the KT600 is only single channel doesn't hinder the board much at all, and in fact belittles the much hyped Dual Channel of the nForce2 chipset. The board lacks multiplier control and the CPU voltage options are fairly limited, allowing you to increase the Core voltage by percentage of the original voltage. When overclocking the proper FSB/PCI dividers are not selectable, nor are the PCI / AGP bus frequencies locked which limits overclocking at any frequency because the AGP and PCI buses will be out of specification before you reach the limits of your CPU or even the chipset itself.
Gigabyte GA-7VT600-L: KT600 Chipset
Performance is good at both 166MHz and 200MHz but just not good enough to beat the nForce2. There is a definite improvement over the KT400 range and is evident in games and memory throughput. The fact that the KT600 is only single channel doesn't hinder the board much at all, and in fact belittles the much hyped Dual Channel of the nForce2 chipset. The board lacks multiplier control and the CPU voltage options are fairly limited, allowing you to increase the Core voltage by percentage of the original voltage. When overclocking the proper FSB/PCI dividers are not selectable, nor are the PCI / AGP bus frequencies locked which limits overclocking at any frequency because the AGP and PCI buses will be out of specification before you reach the limits of your CPU or even the chipset itself.
Gigabyte GA-7VT600-L: KT600 Chipset
