The results of the tests without sound show us how little difference is between all 3 chipsets: less than 1%! Basically we are talking about the same performance. It also shows us that even a Geforce 7800gs is not bottlenecked by the AGP 4X on the VIA KT333 chipset. The so called improved and upgraded memory controller is nowhere to be seen! All reviews of the era showed incremental gains of 3-4% from KT333 to KT400 and around 5% from KT400 to KT400A. Today using the most powerful CPU compatible with all 3 chipsets and an ultra powerful AGP video card we see that AGP 8X, DDR 400 and successive chipsets do not bring more performance!
The results of the tests with sound show us there is practically no difference between AT7 equipped with VIA KT333 and AT7 – MAX 2 equipped with VIA KT400 because both are using Realtek ALC 650 codec. So despite using a different Southbridge – VT8233A versus VT8235 – and a V-link connection to the Northbridge that is double in speed AT7 – MAX 2 only advantage is the USB 2.0 controller integrated in the Southbridge. However we should not discount that advantage: it is compatible with every USB keyboard so no more chasing a keyboard that works with USB 1.1! That alone is a very important from the point of view of compatibility despite not providing any performance advantage whatsoever.
The situation is very different with the KD7A based on VIA KT400A chipset: here there is a big advantage of 8.96% when testing with sound. The explication is very simple: the board uses a VIA VT1616 codec and not a Realtek one. Maybe VIA should have continued on and improved step by step but, unfortunately, it is Realtek that continued on this path and VIA exited the audio and chipset business altogether. Today all we got is a Realtek monopoly but back in the day many others released audio codecs that proved that competition is the key to progress. Nvidia with sound storm, Via with VT1612, VT1616, Realtek with numerous version of its codec and so on. This also begs the question: what performance should we get with a KT600 motherboard such as Abit KV7 equipped with VIA VT1616 audio codec and how it would compare to nforce2 with sound storm?