In February VIA launched the Apollo KT333 chipset onto a suspecting world+dog. At the time, the Taiwanese chipset house (it prefers to call itself a core logic business these days), said that 40-50 per cent of new mobos would support DDR333 fast memory by the end of the year. Some industry observers raised their eyebrows.

But there's little sign yet of VIA revising its projections. Yesterday the company published a
press release in which it boasted of its "success of the VIA Apollo KT333 chipset in becoming the first choice platform in the market for AMD Athlon XP compatible motherboards".

And it names its KT333 mobo design wins - all 20 of them. The list is as follows: Microstar, Asus, Gigabyte, ECS, Epox, ABIT, Chaintech, Acorp, Shuttle, Aopen, FIC, Soyo, Biostar, DFI, Luckystar, Soltek, Jetway, Albatron, Azza and QDI.

It's a long list, it's an impressive list. But there's no sign of market share figures.

VIA is also careful to note the "exceptional speed and stability" of the Apollo KT333 chipset. There were stability and performance issues with the first iteration of the KT266 chipset, and the company is keen to make good any harm that this may have done to its reputation. ®