Chipset Guide

by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 1, 1997 9:36 PM EST
When choosing a motherboard, you must deal with quite a few factors, expansion slots, processor support, speed, stability, and much more, however the root of most of these factors is the chipset the motherboard is designed around. Ever wonder what makes the FIC PT-2007 cache only 64MB of RAM and what makes the FIC PA-2007 cache > 64MB? Not the design of the motherboard, not more experienced engineering, rather the features of the chipset found in each motherboard.

Today there are a number of manufacturers contributing to the chipset market, currently Intel holds the lead with their amazing Triton series of chipsets, and more recently with their P6 line of chipsets, dubbed the 440 and 450 series for desktop and server systems respectively. However, in recent times, VIA Technologies has caught up to Intel's glory and has sought to take a chunk of the tasty market pie. Of course there are other competitors however the main two competing for the title of best chipset manufacturer are undoubtedly Intel and VIA. Who is the winner, where does the competition stand? Keep on reading to find out...

Socket-7 Chipsets Slot-1 Chipsets
Acer Labs Inc (ALi) Intel
Aladdin IV Aladdin V 440FX 440LX
440BX 440GX
Intel VIA
430FX 430HX Apollo Pro
430VX 430TX
Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS)
5571 5597/5598
VIA
VP1 VP2/97 VP3 MVP3
VPX/97 VXPro
ALi Aladdin IV
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  • vortmax2 - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link

    The good ole' days when you could put multiple vendor CPUs into the same motherboard. So simple...
  • PentiumGeek - Thursday, September 1, 2016 - link

    This motherboard was on my 1st PC. I was very disappointed when faced with the problem that DIMM and SIMM memory can't work in the same time. I used Pentium 100Mhz CPU on this motherboard :)
  • Amadeus777999 - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link

    Got an ASUS P2L97 board yesterday and I'm reading through this while DoomII is benchmarking. Good times.
  • rogerjowett - Sunday, May 17, 2020 - link

    Does n e 1 know where I can find a Voltage Regulation Module please

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