333Mhz Athlons & Overclocking - KT400 or nForce2?

Here’s the conclusion to Brandon Bell’s Athlon XP 2600+ (333MHz) Overclocking article @ firingsquad.gamers.com (my italics):

In the process of running our simple little overclocking article, we not only discovered that the newer Athlon XP chips are scaling roughly the same as the first generation Thoroughbred B chips, we’ve also found that the KT400 chipset doesn’t scale as well as nForce2 with the new 333MHz Athlon bus. We always knew nForce2 was faster, now we also see it scales better as well. It will be interesting to see if the performance margins between both chipsets increase as clock speeds scale higher. In theory this is what should take place.

Of course, VIA is hard at work on its KT400A chipset. At Comdex we discovered that it will be a dual-channel implementation. When nForce was originally announced VIA criticized the chipset for its complexity, and even spread a rumor that it would require a six-layer motherboard design. Now they appear to be singing a different tune. The old saying “if you can’t beat him, join him” appears to apply. Here are those KT400/RADEON 9700 PRO numbers we promised earlier, as you can see the margin between the 266MHz and 333MHz CPUs remains the same 3% we saw with the Ti 4600. In comparison, we saw a 6% performance difference between both processors when paired with nForce2 and RADEON 9700 PRO.As far as the Athlon XP 2600+ is concerned, we see no reason why you shouldn’t purchase the 333MHz chip if you have a motherboard based on the KT333 chipset or better. It costs the same as the 266MHz variant, both officially and among the street prices we’ve seen, and both processors are now readily available on the retail market.

If you’re also picking up a motherboard, we highly suggest you pair it with a motherboard based on the nForce2 chipset. As you’ve just seen, you’ll get superior performance out of that solution at 333MHz. Now if AMD would just release Barton, the fun would really begin on the Athlon platform!