Friday, February 25, 2000

Introduction

It's often been said, that the VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset is somewhat slower than the Intel 440BX set, but rarely does one come across a clear demonstration of this. Really, in order make any solid conclusions, it would be necessary to compare two identical motherboards, that just happen to implement the two rival chipsets, respectively. While there does exist a small army of _nearly_ identical boards, it is only thanks to DFI that we can place our hands upon a pair that are identical on _all_ points, except for the chipset in use. Thus, in the one corner we have the CA61, which makes use of the VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset, and opposite to it, the CB61, which makes use of the Intel 440BX set. These two boards are identical in configuration, except of course for the opposing chipsets, and the necessary functions provided by those chipsets.

The differences

The differences seperating the CA61, and the CB61 are:

The performance test results.

To determin once-&-for-all the identity of the truly superior chipset, it will suffice to load each board in-turn with exactly identical configurations.

All tests were performed under Win98.

The configuration of the test system(s) was as follows:

Motherboard(s): DFI CA61 et CB61
Motherboard revision: Rev: A
BIOS Version: 1.0A
CPU: IIntel Coppermine 500E FC-PGA
Memory: 64mb Mushkin PC133 SDram
IDE Primary port master: Quantum Fireball KA 9.1gig UDMA66
IDE Primary port slave: none
IDE secondary port master: Quantum Fireball EIDE ST 3.2A
IDE secondary port slave: Kenwood 52X True X
AGP Port: ATI Rage Fury 128GL
Graphics Card Driver Version: 4.11.6107
OS: Win98 build 4.10
DirectX 6.1

Winstone99 - Winbench99

As you can see, the figures above indicate a net advantage to the Intel 440BX, while the differences in the CPUMark99 benchmark are fairly insignifigant.

Video sub-system tests

Here, there is no doubt that the advantage goes to the 440BX, which managed to pull a few more frames than did the Apollo Pro 133.

Disk sub-system tests

Here, things turned out a little differently. In effect, the CA61 - with its VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset - having support as it does for ATA66 disks, makes quick work of the CB61, and the 440BX. It's thus natural for the advantage to fall to the CA61 is this test. That said, take into account the fact that the performance gap is rather small. As I've often said, ATA66 typically manages to edge out ATA33 by the skin of its teeth under most real-world situations.

Conclusions

In conclusion, save for in disk operations, the Intel 440BX chipset manages to outperform the VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset. Below, you'll find a table that sums up the respective characteristics of each of the two sets.

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