Although Intel got into the Socket 7 chipset business and basically took over, there were many great chipsets out there that didn’t boast the Intel name. Also, Intel decided to move onto sixth generation chipsets after its release of the TX chipset. TX was their last Pentium-class chipset, leaving the market wide open for their competitors to come in and further the field. Companies like VIA, ALi and SIS all began producing inexpensive and high performing chip sets. These vendors were giving Intel a hard time since their chip sets offered Pentium II performance from the simpler, low-cost Socket 7 motherboards including AGP and 100 MHz bus. These advancements led to the evolution of the Socket 7 platform into what is called “Super 7″.

VIA

Via made the chipset that many consider the best non-Intel alternative you could buy. They had a reputation for being on top of the market and driving Intel to improve their technology, but Via chipsets did not hold much of the market at the time. Lets look at some common Via chipsets built for the Socket 7 platform:

• Apollo VP1 – the chipset that marked the entrance of Via into the mainstream market. Although now, VP1 is considered slow and meager, in the times of the 430FX, VP1 packed a punch. Via offered support for options such as EDO, BEDO and SDRAM as well as UltraDMA well before Intel ever got around to it. It lacks power saving features, but it was the design of this chipset that was used in the more popular VP2 as well as the VPX.
  
• Apollo VP2 – The VP2 hit the spotlight with a bang, easily hitting the top of the list for Socket 7 chipsets and bumping head to head with the Intel competition. The VP2 chipset combines the best features found in all Socket-7 chipsets, from BEDO and SDRAM support to UMA and UltraDMA support. VP2 offers support for 512 MB of RAM, all cacheable, as well as up to 2MB or L2 cache. The VP2 is indeed a powerful chipset. The only downer is that it does not support AGP. This support was offered in the VP3. The VP2 was used with all Pentiums, Cyrix 6×86’s, and AMD’s K5 and K6.
  
• VP3 – With Intel’s release of the 440LX chipset, which supports AGP, consumers were limited to the Slot 1 architecture if they wanted AGP. But, then, BAM! Via comes out with the first Socket 7 Pentium chipset that supported AGP, the VP3. Combine the support of the VP2 with larger CPU-DRAM write buffers, support for 1 gig of cacheable RAM, and AGP support, and you’ve got yourself a VP3 chipset. While it indeed was a powerful chipset, it’s biggest letdown was that it did not support the 100MHz bus speed yet.
  
• MVP3 – the Mobile VP3, really a misnomer because it was used in both notebooks and desktops. This chipset offered many important advancements over the original VP3, the most important being the 100MHz frontside bus support. One of the more interesting features of the MVP3 chipset is the ability to run the memory clock at 66MHz while running the rest of the system at 100MHz. This asynchronous bus design gives the user the ability to run at 100MHz frontside bus while still using some of that old EDO or SDRAM lying around.
  
• VXPro – A chipset for the affordable, entry-level system. It was mostly found on cheap motherboards such as those by PCchips. The VXpro supported UltraDMA and SDRAM, although it did not offer the fast memory timings. The VXPro was much like the original VP1, but it was cheaply built. It only supported 64MB of cacheable memory, like the 430TX. Really, the only good thing about this chipset was the price.