VIA Schedules Latest Unified AM2+ Chipset KT/KM960 For 2H07
According to the source related to the mainboard manufacturing market, VIA has scheduled its next-generation unified chipset for AMD platform in 2H07. As a unified chipset, the new model would help VIA to fight in the value market more effective by a lowered cost. Further, supporting Hyper-Transport 3.0 means the chipset is also ready for AMD AM2+ processors.
In fact, VIA’s competitors NVIDIA and ATI have already announced their unified chipset in the earlier time, where NVIDIA has introduced unified design in MCP61 and ATI’s SC780 would come in 2H07. Unified chipset is a marketing trend for the value market that no one could deny, said a friend from the market. VIA’s move is just following the trend, and there will be 2 chipsets released from VIA for AMD platform. These new models include KT960 and KM960 which has build-in Chrome9 HD IGP?KM960. They are in unified design, which helps in lowering the cost.
Featuring Hyper-Transport 3.0, VIA KT960 and KM960 enable an enhanced speed of Hyper-Transport from 1GHz in previous version to 2.6GHz, in other word, from 2GT/s to 5.2GT/s. This makes KT960 and KM960 ready for AMD next-generation AM2+ processors and multi-core processors in the soon coming future.
VIA KT960 and KM960 both have 1 PCI-Express x16, 2 PCI-Express x1, 1 IDE, and 4 SATA II (3Gb/s, NCQ, AHCI) interfaces, where the SATA part supports Port Multiplier which enables up to 16 SATA devices connected in 1 wire. Moreover, the chipsets provide RAID function with VIA RAID StorX technology. VIA KT960 and KM960 also feature Gigabit Ethernet, HD Audio, and 10 USB 2.0.
Chrome 9 HD IGP engine in VIA KM960, in fact, is not a very strong 3D engine, but the design has already enough for those who would like to play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray video as well as Windows Vista Premium, where Direct X 9 and Shader Model 2.0 are supported.
As mentioned, VIA Chrome 9 HD IGP focus on the playback of HD video. So, a new programmable engine is introduced in Chrome 9 HD, in which the core speed is pushed to 450MHz, and has build-in TMDS/HDMI interface and HDCP protection code supporting.
In addition, as the authorization of VIA’s chipset for Intel platform is going to be expired in 2007. Without any news of renewal, so far VIA has only announced the chipset release schedule for AMD platform while there is no news on any chipset for Intel platform.
Source: HKEPC
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