VIA PT Series: VIA PCI Express for Intel
by Wesley Fink on January 31, 2005 12:01 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
PT880 PRO: The "Step-Up" Chipset
The PT880 PRO is the lowest cost of the new PCI Express chipsets. VIA believes that the PT880 PRO will appeal to many buyers, since it offers upgrade possibilities that just aren't available on other Socket 775 boards.
The most unique feature is the availability of a full AGP 8X slot on a PCI Express motherboard designed for Socket 775. There is also a PCI Express video slot, but VIA tells us that the PCIe slot will be limited to x4 operation. Based on the performance in our past reviews, an x4 PCIe should certainly be fast enough for any current PCIe video cards. Significantly, an AGP and PCIe can both run simultaneously to power up to 4 monitors in a multi-display configuration.
- Targeted at Performance Mainstream Segment
- Stepping Stone Solution for PCI Express Transition
- Ideal Replacement for popular i865/i875 motherboards with AGP
- Support for the latest Intel®Pentium®4 & Celeron Processors
- Full Support for 1066MHz FSB
- VIA StepUp Technology
- DDR2 400/533/667
- DDR 400/333/266
- Easy DDR to DDR2 Migration
- The only solution to support both AGP and PCI Express
Graphics cards - Full AGP 8x support
- Full DualGFX Support
- Use AGP and PCI Express Graphics card at the same time!
- VIA Flex Express Architecture
- VIA Universal Graphics Interface
- AGP Graphics
- PCI-Express Graphics
- VIA DualGFX Express Graphics
- Ready for all industry dual GPU standards
- Enhanced multi-display support for up to 4 monitors
- High Bandwidth PCI Express Peripherals
- 2 PCI Express x1 connections to the South Bridge
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indianguy - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
I may be wrong about hard disk bottleneck but these north bridges wont make it big anyway . Nforce 5 for intel pentium 4 for is about to be released soon and it wont be a paper launch like this one. It will kick ass of all other pentium chipsets. See the case of KT890 and nforce 4. Via made so much noise about being first for AMD cpu , but never made it while nforce 4 is everywhere.At the same time , i should also say that these north bridges made great choice for people upgrading old computers like socket 478 , williamette and northwood . I still have one old pentium 3 with via cle 266 chipset in biostar motherboard, where Via gave a new lease of life to my old pentium 3. But apart from that i wont use or reccomend anyone buying Via.
Cygni - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
little to now = little to noCygni - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
I dont agree at all that hard disc performance is whats holding back PC performance. Maybe for read/write heavy apps... but for gaming and general use, HD is hardly the problem, imho. Users these days have gobs of RAM which keeps frequent disc access way down.And theres lots of evidence that HD's arent the bottleneck in gaming. Moving from an ATA 133 drive to a SATA 150 drive barely gives any boost at all. Even moving from ATA 100 to SATA 150 shows little boost at all. Same with using Raptors, little to now increase in FPS. Loading times? Yup. Install times? Deffinitly... but overall performance? I just cant agree.
indianguy - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
This is just a paper launch. Hard disc performance is the main bottleneck nowadays in PC performance. Anyone buying motherboard today without NCQ and sata 2 will be very foolish. Until the 8251 (or 8239) southbridge from via comes , these northbridges wont do any good. Better buy a nforce 4 with sata 2 and sata 2 capable drive from hitachi rather than waste money in these obsolete south bridges and ultra v interconnects from via. By the time 8251 south bridge is actually released by via , next gen of 945/955 chipsets with sata 2/ncq will actually be released by intel making these chipsets only sold by no name mothorboard makers who sell only on price not features . Via makes big noise with no actual performace or product availability . No wonder its running knee deep in losses all these years .Wesley Fink - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
#19 - We carried the overclocking as far as we could with the somewhat limited options available on the Reference board. The overclocking results are at the bottom of page 6.Googer - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
#18 we all know the odd are in favor of AMD winning that battle. 10-1.Azsen - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Have you tried to overclock these boards, see what they are capable of?Dualboy24 - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Well I hope this will help push the 775 boards into a reasonable price range with the support for AGP and PCI-E. This may increase the number of buyers for this platform... but right now I assume most enthusiasts are goinng AMD for the performance and the charts on the review do show why.Looking forward to the next big clash of the titans.... Dual Cores anyone?
Regs - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Wow would I love to see this for the AMD CPU's as well. It will dramatically help PCI-Express melt in to the market.Cygni - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Impressive stuff from VIA. Should do wonders for their marketshare in the P4 market, im thinking. VIA is already doing quite well in S939 with the K8T800Pro, but its going to lose some when NF4 hits in force.