VIA updates chipset roadmap for 2004. VIA PT880-based boards available in retail

This weekend ViperLair published the express interview with Ben Boyden, VIA Technologies representative, which shed some light onto VIA´s chipset roadmap for early 2004.

According to Boyden, next year VIA will primarily focus on the transition PCI-Express and DDR II. As you know, the first company´s chipset supporting PCI-Express will be the discrete PT890 also supporting 800MHz FSB and dual-channel DDR400 with ECC, DDR-II 400/533/667. The integrated PM890 should follow it with the UniChrome 2 GFX graphics.

Besides, early in Q1 2004 VIA is to introduce K8T800 Pro supporting the new 939-pin AMD Athlon 64 processors. The new Pro version will have all the features of K8T800 (800MHz HyperTransport FSB, AGP 2X/4X/8X, Ultra V-Link), and will support 1GHz HyperTransport FSB. It´s interesting that some motherboard makers are already planning to use K8T800 Pro for 754-pin Athlon 64 products counting on their popularity due to 1GHz FSB.

After K8T800 Pro for 64-bit Opteron/Athlon 64 processors we should expect K8T890 that will support PCI-Express and DDR II. VIA also prepares to release new Vinyl Audio and Velocity Gigabit Ethernet solutions.

P.S. By the way, this weekend a board on VIA PT880 supporting dual-channel DDR400 arrived to Japanese retail. It was the PT880 Neo-FISR from Taiwanese MSI priced $100-135.

Source: PC Watch

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