Motherboards in 2000 Preview - Part 1: Chipsets

VIA's Promedia

After the apparent success of the MVP4 on the low-end, VIA is working on yet another integrated chipset solution, this time for the P6 bus. The VIA Promedia chip will feature an integrated Trident video core, the same Blaze 3D core that was used in the old MVP4. The only difference between the Promedia and the MVP4 will be that the Promedia will be found on Socket-370 motherboards and potentially on Slot-1 boards.

Following the Promedia will be none other than the Promedia 2. The Promedia 2 will be the next step in VIA's line of integrated chipset solutions that will integrate a higher performance video core onto the North Bridge. This video core will closely resemble the S3 Savage4 as; in fact, it is manufactured in part by S3. In the future, VIA mentioned that there would be a possibility of integrating the Savage 2000 core into a VIA North Bridge to further extend the life of the Promedia series.

Sometime next year we will also see the integration of the Savage4 core into a P6 chipset solution with support for an external AGP 4X graphics adapter as well. This chipset solution offers a low-cost video solution out of the box, with the option of upgrading to an AGP 4X adapter if the user's needs outgrow what the integrated video is capable of delivering. The on-board AGP 4X slot can be used alongside the integrated video to offer cost effective support for multiple display environments.

Double Data Rate

VIA will release a direct competitor and attractive alternative to Intel's 820/Rambus platform with a P6 bus compliant Double Data Rate chipset. This chipset will allow for support for Double Data Rate SDRAM (PC2100) that will provide an effective 2.1GB/s of memory bandwidth, 33% greater than the 1.6GB/s of PC800 RDRAM. Not only will DDR SDRAM provide for more bandwidth than RDRAM but it will also be a cheaper solution. At first, the market can be expected to pay a nice premium for DDR SDRAM but the cost per module will still be less than that of RDRAM. This price difference is partially due to the fact that manufacturers do not have to pay any royalty feels to Intel for using DDR SDRAM while they do with RDRAM.

VIA's workstation level DDR chipset will most likely be licensed from Micron as they already have a P6-bus compliant DDR chipset ready. A DDR version of the Apollo Pro 133A will be released shortly thereafter. For those of you that aren't aware of it, DDR SDRAM does feature a different pinout than regular SDRAM. A picture of a DDR SDRAM module is pictured below.