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Alternatives to nforce

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Via KT600 is the only chipset that even comes close to the performance of the Nforce AFAIK. I think that the Nforce will be the high watermark for Socket A.

The KT600 is as good performer, but it isn't as good as the Nforce. Lower cost, and a smaller chance of BIOS corruption are the only reasons I can think of to choose it over the Nforce.

Where the 7VT600 1394 really falls short is in the enthusiast market. The lack of an AGP/PCI lock is a glaring disadvantage for overclockers, especially compared to mature nForce2 motherboards with adjustable AGP/PCI locks. The 7VT600 1394’s overclocking disadvantage is best exemplified by the relatively low 205MHz FSB overclock we achieved; nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards reach considerably higher FSB overclocks, mostly over 218MHz FSB and as high as 235MHz FSB. At stock speeds, the 7VT600 1394 is also slower than nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards, although the difference does not become severe until you reach our workstation benchmarks. Still, VIA has had more than enough time to tweak the KT600, and so the fact that KT600 is still slower than the 9+ months old nForce2 chipset is unacceptable for enthusiasts.
Pretty typical of KT600 motherboards. But with a 1/6 divisor, you can hit FSB speeds in the same range that most Nforce overclockers are.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1838&p=12
 
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The KT600 is a more feature-rich chipset when compared to the nForce2 chipset. One of the KT600's key features is its integrated SATA 150 controller, which is built into the South Bridge unlike the nForce2, which needs an external chip to use SATA. One disadvantage that the KT600 has is that it is only able to run RAM in single channel. While it may not make that much difference, the difference is there.

If you are intent on not going with an nForce2 chipset, then you might want to consider waiting for the KT880 chipset (not to be confused with the K8T800, which is an A64 chipset). The KT880 will provide dual-channel memory support, along with all of the KT600's features. More can be found on the KT880 here
 
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