VOGONS


First post, by piatd

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I'm looking for evidence of when motherboards based on AMD 760 or KT133A chipsets were available for purchase in public retail channels.


As with my PIII 800 thread, I'm pegging my builds to calendar years. I respectfully ask that you table discussions of the rationale for calendar-year builds--as well what it means to be "period correct"--to other threads.


Preliminary research indicates that neither solution was available for purchase in 2000.

AMD 760
[*]No AMD 760 mobos in the January 2001 edition of PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, PC Magazine, and Maximum PC. An AMD 760 mobo is advertised for sale in the February 2001 edition of Maximum PC.
[*]Review sites suggest that AMD 760 mobos where not available to purchase until at least February 2001. Here's a timeline (emphasis mine):

October 30, 2000
Anandtech and Tom's Hardware announce AMD's launch of the AMD 760 chipset and the arrival of DDR-SDRAM for motherboards. Anand benchmarks a 760 reference board (Corona EVT8 760, provided by AMD), while Tom's benchmarks a different 760 reference board (Corona EVT7 , provided by AMD) and a Gigabyte GA-7DX (Rev. 1.1). The GA-7DX is "... too early [a] version to run reliably at 133 MHz FSB." Tom's lists the AMD 760 release as "November 2000."

November 30, 2000
Anand asks, "When can DDR motherboards [including AMD 760] be widely available to the public? What will be the average cost of those boards? "

January 4, 2001
Tom's says, "Unfortunately AMD ran into some motherboard design problems with this chipset, which is why there's still no official AMD760-platform with support of 133 MHz processor bus available in the market.” The AMD 760 board reviewed, the MSI K7 Master, is described as "upcoming.” Tom's continues,"AMD's 760 chipset is pretty well-known these days, although it is hardly available." The article concludes, " ... right now neither [AMD 760 and ALi MaGiK1-platforms] seem to be available and it looks as if ALi MaGiK1 motherboards will hit the shelves earlier than boards with AMD760. So if you can't wait, you might have to go for the slower chipset. I personally would wait for AMD 760."

January 22, 2001
Tom's says, "The whole market seems to be struck by a huge disillusionment, because we are still waiting both for DDR motherboards and memory to become widely available. Many people are starting to call the introduction of Double Data Rate memory a failure. " Tom's continues, "Instead of prematurely reporting on those DDR-motherboards that nobody is able to buy, we chose to introduce six new motherboards with VIA's latest Athlon chipset, the Apollo KT133A."

February 13, 2001
Anand publishes its "first individual AMD 760 motherboard review ... .” It's the "the final, shipping revision of the FIC AD11 armed with the final, shipping revision of the AMD 760 chipset."

March 14, 2001
Tom's reviews its first AMD 760 motherboards. The “introduction” of the AMD 760 chipset is listed as “February 2001.”

KT133A
[*]No KT133A mobos in the January 2001 edition of PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, PC Magazine, and Maximum PC. A KT133A mobo is advertised for sale in the February 2001 edition of Maximum PC.
[*]Review sites suggest that KT133A mobos where not available to purchase until at least January 2001. Here's a timeline (emphasis mine):

December 20, 2000
Tom's Hardware says:
"We would like to mention that none of those motherboards is able to support the new Athlon with 133 MHz (266 MHz DDR) FSB. This new feature will be implemented into a new league of motherboards with VIA's upcoming KT133A chipset. Those motherboards will still use PC133 SDRAM with single data rate. They will become available early next year."

January 4, 2001
Tom's reviews its first KT133A board, the Asus A7V133, using a “pre-release BIOS.” Tom's says, “I will have to disappoint those of you, who might expect that KT133A-motherboards would become available very soon, because it seems as if a missing design spec from AMD will force most motherboard makers to redesign their KT133A motherboards.”

January 9, 2001
HardOCP reviews the “first KT133A board we could get our hands on,” the Soltek SL-75KAV-X. They say, “If you are going to build yourself a new system now and want to go the AMD route, my money is on the soon-to-be released KT133A mainboards.”

January 12, 2001
HardOCP mentions “ABIT KT7As started shipping out of Taipei on Monday of this week and should be ready for sale by some retailers today. “

January 21, 2001
Tom's reviews 6 boards with the KT133A chipset. KT133A platforms are described as “now offered.”

March 14, 2001
Tom's lists the “introduction” of the KT133A chipset as “January 2001.”

Reply 2 of 5, by Baoran

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I think KT133A motherboards became more widely availlable near end of January 2001 because that is when other review sites started getting hands on them with the final bios. Also they started reviewing half a dozen different boards within just 2 weeks or so.

Reply 3 of 5, by Horun

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
piatd wrote on 2020-03-08, 21:49:

I'm looking for evidence of when motherboards based on AMD 760 or KT133A chipsets were available for purchase in public retail channels.
I'm pegging my builds to calendar years.

Ok have you tried using the wayback machine and look at TigerDirect, Newegg, CDW or other main retailers back then ? I would forget looking at Anandtech, Toms, etc (except to get within a year) because they got stuff back then (and now) before it was really "retail" avaliable. Never did like how they did their reviews but that is just my opinion.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 5, by lost77

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I was looking at KT133A back then. I remember the Asus A7V133 was avaliable in mid January 2001. I wanted Abit though and bought the Abit KT7A in late January. I'm pretty sure I saw the Asus a7M266 in stock at that time.

Reply 5 of 5, by Skyscraper

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I did look into this at some point.

This is a copy paste from what I wrote in another thread.

"

The only AMD 760 boards you could get your hands on in year 2000 were AMDs own Corona EVT8 board and Asus A7M266 and the Asus is a maybe.

The legend is something like this.

The issue was that there was a bug in the first shipping B2 AMD760 chipset revision fixable by adding some circuitry to the board. As the first tier manufacturers already had finished their designs and started making boards when the bug was found late summer / early fall 2000 the launch had to be delayed. AMD rushed a new modified referance board with the fix added and this board, the Corona EVT8 shipped to some reviewers late October and to system builders in November, systems using this board started shipping late November.

Asus also managed to get their board design (the A7M266) modified and ready before the New Year and I think the official launch date was in late November only a couple of weeks after AMD started shipping Corona EVT8. One thing is for sure though, supply was VERY limited the first couple of months and I can't find any early A7M266 reviews at all.

The way I see it is that if the chipset was launced year 2000 then all boards using that chipset is period correct for year 2000.

I'm using the ABIT KG7-RAID my self and I have a non raid KG7 as a spare. I also have the Asus A7M266 and it's a nice motherboard.

"

How I think it is.

Did the AMD 760 chipset release in year 2000: yes
Did working boards exist in year 2000: yes
Could you actually buy them: Probably not unless you were willing to buy a complete prebuilt system based around the AMD Corona EVT8 motherboard.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.