VIA Q3 2004 Chipset Roadmap Updates

VIA Socket 754/939/940 North Bridges

VIA's AMD chipset offerings are pretty similar in terms of features to their Intel offerings. Let's start with the discreet solutions again.

As you can see, things match up almost exactly with the Intel platform chipsets. Of course they use a HyperTransport bus to interface with the processor as opposed to the quad-pumped bus of Intel designs, and they do not have a memory controller as that is taken care of by the AMD processors. Other than that, though, we see similar features with the difference being in the graphics and South Bridge support. VIA does not have plans for an AMD chipset with both AGP and PCIe interfaces, but we still have the option of a dual PCI Express graphics solution with the K8T890 Pro. Again, the high end model requires the use of the more advanced VT8251 South Bridge, but those are the only major differences. Remember that DDR2 memory support is not an option for AMD systems right now, as that is determined by the CPU's memory controller.

On the integrated graphics chipsets, we have only two options. The currently shipping K8M800 uses the older UniChrome Pro IGP with the option of an AGP add-in card, while the K8M890 includes the DeltaChrome IGP as well as a PCI Express graphics slot. The K8M890 also supports a faster 1 GHz HyperTransport bus and the Ultra V-Link. As there are currently no high performance IGP chipsets for Athlon 64/Opteron, VIA has the potential to gain some market share, especially in the low-cost market. Of course, our recent look at ATI's chipset plans show that this is not going to be the case for much longer. Depending on pricing, though, VIA may still provide a reasonable alternative to other IGP solutions.