VIA Apollo Pro 133: A Camino Preview

The Test

AnandTech used an Intel Pentium III 600 in all of the tests, the processor was either clocked at 100MHz x 6.0 in the case of all 100MHz FSB tests or 133MHz x 4.5 in the case of all 133MHz FSB tests. 

The Intel BX based motherboard used was the ABIT BX6 Revision 2.0 and featured the latest BIOS update as of August 15, 1999 and was configured optimally for performance using the fastest SDRAM (222) timings.

Both systems used the same 128MB SDRAM module manufactured by Enhanced Memory Systems, and is guaranteed for 133MHz FSB operation.

The test hard drive was a Western Digital 8.4GB Ultra ATA 33 HDD.

The AOpen AX63 and AX63 Pro both featured the Mobile South Bridge VT82C596A.  The two VIA based boards used similar North Bridge chips, the AX63 (Apollo Pro Plus) used the VT82C693 and the AX63 Pro (Apollo Pro 133) used the VT82C693A.  The only difference between the two North bridge chips is that the VT82C693A officially supports the 133MHz FSB and thus supports the 1/2 AGP clock divider.

Windows 98 SE was installed on all test systems, and the latest drivers were common to all systems.  The two VIA boards used the VIA Service Pack 4.01 for all driver installations.

A default clocked NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra (150MHz core / 183MHz memory) was used as the common graphics cards in all tests.  The TNT2 Ultra was picked due to its excellent drivers and full AGP 2X implementation to properly illustrate performance differences between all chipsets.