VIA has been showcasing motherboards carrying its K8T890 chipset – from the likes of Abit, Asus, MSI and Gigabyte. It is a north bridge chipset that brings PCI Express connectivity to the high-end AMD 64 platform.
The Pro version of the chipset, featuring DualGFX Express to support dual graphic-card systems, is expected to appear in full production by the beginning of next year. With this chipset VIA covers the full range of AMD processors, and claims the multi-tasking capabilities of the Athlon 64 make it ideally suited for supporting multi-display operation. VIA anticipates a large demand for such apps, whether for advanced gaming (a la the Nintendo dual screen) or workstation-based CAD and GIS processing.
Asus also highlighted the imminent release of a Deluxe version of its A8VE motherboard. For Athlon 64 processors, it features the Asus AI Proactive tools for overclocking: the Precision Tweaker (for adjusting voltage supplied to memory modules and the frequency of a PCIe graphics card), Peg Link Mode (increasing the frequency of the GPU through the motherboard BIOS), the Non-delay Overclocking System (for overclocking the CPU via real-time auto-tuning), WiFi-g Onboard (for sharing Internet and network access via motherboard-integrated wireless networking) and Net2 (a diagnostic facility within the BIOS for reporting network cable faults).
Aimed at the performance/enthusiast PC market, the A8VE-Deluxe board will be priced at 130 (including VAT) and should be available by the second week in December.
VIA first announced the K8T890 chipset, which brings PCI Express connectivity to the AMD 64 platform, back in September – PCI Express trained on AMD 64.
Via’s south bridge chipset, the VT8251 (providing support for four SATA devices, the Command queue protocol and RAID 5) is also scheduled to appear at the beginning of 2005 to complement the north bridge K8T890.
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