VIA MVP4 Chipset

The VT82C501 System Multimedia Architecture (SMA) North Bridge controller that makes up half of the MVP4 chipset is home to the same features the MVP3's North Bridge (VT82C598) controller, with the addition of two healthy and welcome enhancements. The heart of the North Bridge controller, as the acronym SMA alludes to, is the addition of an integrated multimedia video device that supports 2D/3D and hardware DVD acceleration. The integrated AGP video solution was custom manufactured for VIA by a fairly well known company in the PC video industry, Trident.

Although they're not famous for making the most high performance graphics accelerators and chipsets, Trident managed to come through quite well with the integrated Blade 3D core present on the VT82C501 North Bridge. In a recent communication with Trident about the company's goals for the Blade 3D core, AnandTech was told plainly and simply that the Blade 3D does not compete with the 3Dfx and nVidia's of the world, however the price to performance ratio the Blade 3D offers is quite impressive.

While it would have been ideal, for gamers at least, for VIA to have picked something along the lines of a TNT to integrate into the MVP4, from a cost perspective, Trident's name and their product made the perfect finish to VIA's low-cost flagship. You can't expect the performance of the integrated Trident core to be top notch, however as AnandTech's tests of the MVP4 showed, the integration of the core into the physical chipset allowed for much higher bus transfer tests in the raw 2D and 3D performance comparisons that were conducted.

Since the video controller is present at the lowest of levels (physically integrated into the North Bridge controller), communication between the video and memory subsystems it at a peak in efficiency as the video bus is not being limited by the specifications of an external interface. As far as memory is concerned, the integrated video controller shares the system memory using up to 8MB as its frame buffer memory (as was the case with the board AnandTech received), a decent sized frame buffer which should be large enough for the applications, both business and entertainment related, that the MVP4 may be pitted up against.

The North Bridge also allows for an integrated hardware DVD decoder, a feature that not only eliminates the need for an external PCI DVD decoder (therefore occupying one of the limited PCI slots on a low-cost/low-expansion MVP4 board) but it also brings high quality and high performance DVD playback into the hands of the masses. A quick search with most on-line vendors will reveal that a generic IDE DVD drive will set you back no more than $100 for a decent drive, often times dipping down into the $70 level, which definitely helps push the growing DVD standard into the hands of more users, in more homes at a more affordable price.

On the memory side of things, the MVP4 North Bridge supports a maximum of 2048KB (2MB) of Level 2 cache, and is capable of caching up to 508MB of memory although the theoretical maximum installed memory limitation of the chipset is 768MB. The 508MB cacheable memory area is achieved with a 2MB L2 cache size, with 1MB boards offering a 254MB cacheable memory area, and 512KB L2 boards providing a 127MB cacheable memory area. Although this is a definite downside to the MVP4 and the Super7 platform in general, if you find yourself requiring more than 254/508MB of system RAM you'll want to drop any thoughts of a cost efficient system right away.

For those of you that are not familiar with the term cacheable memory area, if you were to physically exceed your motherboard/chipset's cacheable memory area (i.e. installing 768MB of RAM in a 2MB L2 MVP4 board), any memory accesses made above the cacheable memory limit (i.e. 508MB w/ 2MB of L2 on a MVP4) would be effectively slower than those beneath the limit, degrading your overall system performance.