Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Motherboards > DDR for Pentium III: 10 Boards with VIA Apollo Pro 266

DDR for Pentium III: 10 Boards with VIA Apollo Pro 266

07:00 - Monday 30 April 2001 by Frank Völkel

1. More Bandwidth For The Pentium III?
2. DDR SDRAM For Socket 370
3. General Overview Of VIA Apollo Pro 266, Continued
4. Difference Between SDR SDRAM And DDR SDRAM
5. AOpen AX37 Plus - 6x USB
6. Asus CUV266 - A Special Layout
7. Chaintech CT-6VJD: The Fastest Board
8. DFI CD70-SC - Ho-hum
9. Gigabyte GA-6RX - Multitalented, But A Bit Kooky
10. MSI Pro266 Master (MS-6366) - A Board For All Seasons
11. Shuttle AV30 (V11) - Good Performance

The new VIA Apollo Pro 266 is supposed to infuse the somewhat dated Intel Pentium III with renewed vigor. The new chipset offers more memory bandwidth when used in concert with DDR SDRAM memory, which means that it should be able to boost the Pentium III's performance to top Intel's own 815 chipset. Previously, only the AMD platform with Athlon and Duron had appropriate chipsets with DDR support.

Now that the Apollo Pro 266 is gaining in popularity, it seems that the winds of change are blowing - the customer will be in the enviable position of being able to choose between the rather pricey Intel 815 - which only supports SDRAM - and the Apollo Pro 266. Although the Apollo Pro 133A, another VIA product, is de facto still available on the market, its memory performance wasn't exactly convincing, a fact that was reflected in numerous tests. Currently, there is a large number of boards with the Apollo Pro 266 available on the market. We decided to put a total of ten motherboards through their paces.

The new VIA Apollo Pro 266 give serious grounds for hope - by supplying more memory bandwidth, the total performance should be several cuts above the competition (Intel 815). That hope was the basic reason for running the tests on the Apollo Pro 266.