SUMMARY: Today we will see the launch of three new chipsets from VIA Technologies for the Pentium 4 chipset - namely the VIA PT880 Pro, PT894 and PT894 Pro. They wish to penetrate the Pentium 4 chipset market with the aim of maximizing end-user upgradeability and value for money by allowing you to use your AGP graphics card AND PCI Express graphics card together along with the ability to choose between using DDR or DDR-II memory. Read on for our impressions of the new chipsets from VIA!
The VIA PT894 chipset is exactly the same as the PT880 Pro except instead of providing support for both AGP and PCI Express, it simply provides one full 16 lanes PCI Express graphics slot. VIA have designed the PT894 as an alternative to the Intel 915P chipset and it should do quite well in this market especially if boards based on the VIA chipset are cheaper considering the newer features the VIA Southbridge provides.
Again, motherboard manufacturer will be able to offer the PT894 with either DDR or DDR-II memory support but since this chipset is targeted more so at the mainstream enthusiast user you wouldn’t think motherboard companies would offer DDR and DDR-II support on their retail boards. Either DDR or DDR-II would make more sense and we’d probably lean closer to DDR-II. For motherboard companies from the sales prospective, offering both memory standards would take the spotlight off their PT880 Pro boards, who would presumably be offering DDR and DDR-II as well as AGP and PCI Express on the one board but you never know.
Depending on the overclockability (and if the popular VIA PCI lock is in place) and performance of the new VIA chipset, the PT894 chipset could end up doing quite well against the 915P (and even 925X and possibly even 925XE) for VIA especially considering it supports 1066 FSB processors at a reduce priced from the 925XE. In any case though, it is sure to heat up the Pentium 4 chipset market and make things more exciting as well as importantly give you guys more options before nVidia barge through with their nForce5 Pentium 4 chipset sometime soon which will bring SLI support to the Pentium 4 platform.
