Abit to adopt Via Pentium 4 chipsets

The board, called the VI7, is scheduled to be introduced early in the third quarter, it appears.

It will use the Via PT800 chipset, which features the 8237 south bridge and also support DDR 400 memory, an 800MHz front side bus, AGP 8X, S-ATA RAID, USB 2, 10/100 Ethernet and SPDIF-out.

The question here is how well the Via chipset will perform and be priced against Intel's Springdale and Canterwood chipset. According to our information, the board will be much cheaper than the latest Intel chipsets that support DDR 400, despite the fact that Via is paying a licence fee.

Via will also be competing against the UMC-SIS-ALI axis of chipsets. These use dual DDR 400 support, while the PT800 doesn't yet support that standard.

Nevertheless, the KT600 chipset we've seen previewed at a couple of hardware sites was able to outscore dual DDR 400 Nforce 2 400 Ultra chipsets, even though it only uses single channel DDR 400. µ