ALi MAGiK 1: The Athlon gets a second DDR platform

Final Words

The AMD 760 now has a companion in ALi's MAGiK 1, unfortunately for ALi, the MAGiK 1 is going to be compared to its more polished peer from now until motherboard manufacturers stop using the 760.

From the perspective of the motherboard manufacturers, the ALi MAGiK 1 is a superior solution to AMD's 760 because of its PC100/PC133 SDRAM support, enabling the construction of custom boards for OEMs and system integrators that desire both SDR and DDR SDRAM support on a board.

However, as our benchmarks have shown, the MAGiK 1 does have a bit of growing to do before it can truly become an alternative to the AMD 760 chipset. With PC2100 DDR SDRAM, the MAGiK 1 falls around 5% short of the AMD 760. While this may not seem like much, once you take into account that the AMD 760, in many cases, is only 10 - 15% faster than the older VIA KT133 with PC133 SDRAM all of the sudden the MAGiK 1 begins to negate the performance benefits of moving to DDR SDRAM.

Using PC1600 DDR SDRAM with the MAGiK 1 is a joke, at least in its current state. The performance level is often times no better than that of a KT133 while costing more.

Luckily there is room for improvement, both with BIOS updates from motherboard manufacturers and with improved driver support from ALi. However by the time the MAGiK 1 is up to speed, VIA's KT266 may be close to hitting the streets if not already making itself a home in what could've been ALi's territory.

At the same time there is also the strong possibility that the MAGiK 1's DRAM controller simply isn't as high performing of a solution as what AMD implemented in their 760. This is a very realistic possibility as the third party manufacturers have never been able to meet the performance levels of Intel/AMD when it came to chipset performance.

If ALi had preceded the AMD 760 launch with the shipment of the MAGiK 1 and had garnered more support months ago, we might have been looking at a much more mature part. Instead we have to play the waiting game and see what the motherboard manufacturers and ALi can do with a bit of "MAGiK."

For more motherboards based on the ALi MAGiK 1 chipset, read our article on ALi's future.