Earlier this week we reported about VIA considering producing a Dual Channel solution for the Athlon XP to compete solely against nVidia's nForce2. Since then we have heard from a very reliable source close to the Taiwanese chipset manufacturer that they will be making available a Dual Channel chipset solution for Athlon XP, probably called KT680, which has been requested by many motherboard companies.

It was never planned for VIA to create a Dual Channel product for K7, the source said, and it has only become available since the memory controller has already been produced for their upcoming VIA PT880 Dual Channel chipset for the Pentium 4 and the fact that motherboard companies want to produce retail boards based on it. This saves VIA spending lots of (unnecessary) R&D monies on creating a separate memory controller for a technology which will be over-shadowed in under a month by Athlon 64, the source explained.

And while on the subject of VIA chipsets, the same source also told us today that VIA will release their PT880 chipset with Dual Channel support for the Pentium 4 to compete against Canterwood soon, probably at Computex 2003 in Taiwan, and should be ready to ship in about 6 weeks as they hit final silicon.

< /rumour talk off>