VIA Picks up the Pieces: AGP <b><i>and</b></i> PCI Express on 2004 Roadmap

VIA's Pentium 4 chipset roadmap is finally exciting again; after being virtually absent for the majority of the Pentium 4's lifespan the PT890 chipset will offer Dual Channel DDR/DDR2 memory interfaces, PCI Express support and AGP support this quarter.

The inclusion of a PCI Express x4 interface off the North Bridge could pave the way for high speed networking or storage devices with no bandwidth constraints. A PCI Express channel off the North Bridge will undoubtedly take the place of propretary Gigabit Ethernet links that were common on this last generation of chispets.

VIA honestly needs to get boards out by March if they want the PT890 to gain any traction before Intel's April/May launch of 925X and the 915 series of chipsets.

The Athlon XP will finally get Dual Channel memory support from VIA this quarter with the KT880. There is no PCI Express support slated for the Athlon XP meaning that the platform is surely being set up to fade away this year.

VIA's K8T800 is the chipset of choice for Socket-940 users right now, and later this quarter VIA will update the chipset to support a 1GHz Hyper Transport link. Then in Q2 VIA will add on to the 1GHz HT link and offer, once again, both AGP and PCI Express interfaces with the K8T890 chipset.

In theory, motherboard manufacturers could have both AGP 8X and PCI Express x16 slots on their motherboards, making those solutions extremely upgrade friendly for those who aren't ready to take the PCI Express plunge.

VIA's South Bridges can be paired with any of VIA's North Bridges and looking at the roadmap we see that the VT8251 South Bridge will bring 4 SATA ports, Gigabit Ethernet and PCI Express support to motherboards that use it. In theory you could get PCI Express support on an Athlon XP platform by using this South Bridge but you would still lack a x16 interface for graphics. The VT8251 will also boast upgraded audio as an option.

It looks like VIA has the potential to pick up some P4 marketshare during the PCI Express transition if all goes well according to their roadmap.