VIA KT133A Motherboard Roundup - June 2001

The Winners and Conclusion

This roundup is very different from the one we had a little over six months ago with the KT133 chipset. After almost one year of release, the KT133 chipset and its successor, the KT133A, have become very mature chipsets. Manufacturers have had quite a bit of time to familiarize themselves with all the ins and outs and are able to squeeze the most out of them.

The result is a very close race at the top of the list. Both the ASUS A7V133 and the Iwill KK266 are excellent examples of what a truly exceptional KT133A motherboard should be. The ASUS A7V133 is excellent for its fully jumperless design, while the Iwill KK266 shows us the true limits of extreme overclocking.

Moreover, both boards performed extremely well also, scoring first and second in most of our benchmarks. They are also of very high qualities at a relatively reasonable range of prices. Both boards offer an optional onboard IDE RAID controller, although the Iwill KK266 stands out a bit here by supporting RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1.

One thing we want to stress is that many of the other boards here also placed just behind our two winners. The ASUS and Iwill boards were just able to offer all the small features to put them slightly ahead of the others, and that's the why we've chosen them as the winners. Most other contenders are still delivering very nice features and performance at a decent price.

It is just impossible for us to give out a single Editor's Choice Award with this roundup, while at the same time we can't give the award to too many boards either. The ABIT KT7A-RAID, ASUS A7V133, Gigabyte GA-7ZXR (2.2), Iwill KK266, and MSI K7T Turbo are all very good boards. Each of them has their own pros and cons and we're going to leave it up to you to pick your own winner.

The fact that so many boards are so good may actually be a good thing since you will have more flexibility in choosing a board that fits your needs, rather than wasting time finding a board that works as you expect it too. At the same time, if your favorite board is not available to you, it should be easy to find a suitable alternative. From our perspective as hardware enthusiasts, we recommend choosing between our two winners, the ASUS A7V133 and the Iwill KK266, if possible.