VIA KT400 Motherboard Roundup

Introduction

The KT400 chipset was met by the enthusiast community with mixed emotions. On the one hand it offers high performance with plenty of features, however, on the other hand it does not provide any tangible performance increase over its predecessor, the KT333. This is primarily due to the fact that the Athlon's peak bandwidth of 2.7GB/sec cannot make use of the extra memory bandwidth 3.2GB/sec (DDR400) memory provides.

So, although a KT400 board isn't the best upgrade from a KT333 or KT266A board unless you require AGP 8x or Serial ATA, it still has much to offer for those upgrading from older chipsets. Recently, a flurry of KT400 boards have hit our labs and rather then writing individual reviews, we have decided to write a mini shootout. The boards include: Abit's AT7-MAX2, Abit's KD7-RAID, MSI's KT4 Ultra and Soyo's KT400 Dragon Ultra.

Due to the fact that the boards are based on the same chipset, performance is likely to be identical. Thus, the only way we can determine a winner is by looking at each board's price, feature-set and package contents.

Which KT400 board deserves the number one spot on your next upgrade list? Read on to find out!