KT133E?

Just over a month ago we took a look at VIA's KT133A motherboard chipset, and spoke of its outstanding performance with the old and new Athlons alike. Last week though, and under shady circumstances, manufacturer VIA announced that they intend to revise the KT133A and produce a new KT133E, which will address the requirements of the new AMD Palomino's "PowerNow!" power conservation systems. Palomino and its little brother Morgan are enhanced versions of current Athlon and Duron technology. "PowerNow!" is a feature previously seen at last year's Comdex in AMD's new line of K6 laptops, which monitors the voltage and CPU frequency requirements of the processor and increases / decreases them when needed. The Tech Report's Comdex coverage features a video demonstration of "PowerNow!", which can be found at the bottom of this page. Back to the KT133E though, and does this mean that owners of KT133A motherboards are out of luck when it comes to Palomino? Thankfully, no it does not. Palomino and Morgan should both be able to adjust multiplier and frequency on the fly without the aid of a "PowerNow! aware" chipset, which the KT133E purports to be. The upshot of the KT133E's refinements though is the ability to vary the voltage supplied to the CPU, which will make it more attractive to new buyers. Whether motherboard giants ABit, ASUS, Gigabyte and co. from Taiwan will bother to repackage their KT133A lines to take advantage of the new revision is currently unknown. Of course, the other question is, does anybody really care about KT133-whatever, when PC2100 DDR memory is now shipping at $60 for 128Mb from the USA? Related Feature - KT133A - Performance for Less?