Via takes Nvidia head on with DX9 future parts

JANUARY ROADMAPS seen by the INQUIRER show that Via is preparing an onslaught on the firm that it sees as its chief rival, Nvidia.

The battle as, you'd expect, is being fought on several fronts and include the Athlon 64, sound and the good old IGP, again.

The first onslaught is on the Intel front, however, with Via expecting to see its Pentium 4 chipsets using the PM800 to offer an upgradeable option at prices it hopes will ruffle Intel's tail feathers. Yet there still appear to be some difficulties with the Unichrome Pro.

On the AMD front, Via's KT800 will support the 8251, and PCI Express will loom into view. The 8239 will be a chip that takes second place to the 8251, we understand.

And the KT880 chipset will also have 8251 support, meaning that while Socket A still lives, we'll see PCI Express in two lanes for such beasties. In Q3 this year, the Athlon FX gets a 754 pin retrofit.

Via is tampering with the names of its products. The Unichrome 2 graphics platform will change to the Unichrome Pro, while Unichrome 3 will turn into DeltaChrome IGP.

So we'll see a P4M800 chipset offering DDR 400, AGP 8X and have a Unichrome graphics core.

Via's Pentium PT890 will support three system bus speeds - 400, 533 and 800MHz, include dual 64-bit channels, and support both DDR-2 and DDR-1. DDR-2 will go up to 666MHz, while PCI Express/AGP 8X support will be built in. This will be in mass production, we suspect at the end of this quarter. The PT* family of chips will support Prescott, Northwood, and Willamette cores.

The PM890 is a graphics Deltachrome IGP version of the PT890, and will include features as above, but also Deltachrome IGP with DX9 support, with mass production expected in the third quarter of this year.

Via is also readying the C3 SMA CN400 chip, supporing DDR 400 and below, having Unichrome Pro, MPEG 4 acceleration, integrated video and AGP 8X. That's slated for next month.

AMD Chipsets
Then we're going to have the KT890, also a PCI Express enable chipset slated for the second quarter of this year, including 1GHz hypertransport.

There's an integrated graphics version called the K8M890, including 1GHz HT at 2GT/sec, and also supporting Deltachrome IGP with DX9 support, like its Pentium 4 brother. That's slated for Q3 this year.

Before this, we'll see the 1GHz 2GT/sec K8T800 Pro - launched next month.

Via's AMD high end K8 chipsets will support Mr Opteron as well as Mr Athlon 64.