SUMMARY: With so many VIA KT333 motherboards on the market today, or ones which are about to be released, for the buyer it could be a hard task to choose which board to go with. These days there is not a great deal of real-world performance difference between motherboards using the same chipsets, which means manufactures are having to be more clever with the features they include and things which count, like software bundles. Today Asher "Acid" Moses takes a look at one of these new KT333 boards, the feature-packed Soyo KT333 Dragon Ultra to be exact. Does it have the stuff to seat your AMD processor? Read on, as that is the only way you're going to find out!
Just a few months after the launch of VIA's KT333 chipset, almost all of the prominent motherboard manufacturers have their KT333 motherboards on sale in retail channels all over the world. When the first benchmark numbers of the KT333 chipset were released, many consumers and reviewers alike were not very impressed. This is simply because the chipset does not provide a tangible performance increase over its predecessor, the KT266A chipset, due to the current AMD Athlon processors not being able to utilise the extra memory bandwidth that the KT333 chipset provides. Nonetheless, it is still a very solid chipset and although owners of KT266A boards will not be motivated to upgrade just yet, the KT333 chipset has proven itself to be a viable solution for those looking to upgrade from slightly older platforms (e.g. AMD760).
We have taken a look at quite a few KT333 based motherboards here at TweakTown in the past. These include: the Abit AT7, the Asus A7V333, the EPoX 8K3A+, the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP and the Soltek 75DRV5. Continuing our KT333 coverage, we have managed to obtain Soyo's KT333 based motherboard, the KT333 Dragon Ultra.
The KT333 Dragon Ultra is actually the third motherboard in Soyo's "Dragon" series, with its predecessors being the K7V Dragon (KT266) and the K7V Dragon Plus (KT266A). Both of these boards gained Soyo quite a good reputation because they offered a wide range of features, high performance and were priced at a fraction of what the competition was charging for their boards based on the same chipset. Have Soyo got another winner in the KT333 Dragon Ultra? Read on as we attempt to find out!
