Intel has usually dominated the chipset market for a long time. While chipsets from SiS and VIA were always there, Intel’s core logic chipsets were the choice of many Intel preferring enthusiast. If we were to take out Alderwood and Grantsdale out of the picture for the time being, their Springdale and Canterwood chipsets were a new step in performance for the last generation of Intel microprocessors. Intel offered almost all features desired by the enthusiast crowd and with new performance discoveries and features of the Springdale chipset, no other chipset maker could take the crown away from the world’s largest chipmaker in both mainstream and high-end performance segments. In fact, after third party board makers started tweaking the Springdale core logics, they were robust enough to compete against its high-end counterpart.

Now, after the launch of Alderwood and Grantsdale early last year, the story completely changed, at least it seems that way for the time being. As you know, the chipmaker introduced a plethora of technologies for the future and with any new standard it takes time for the market to transition to newer and better technologies. Due to performance immaturity with DDR2 and lacking market of PCIe standard peripherals, the enthusiast segment wasn’t encouraging last year. This gave quite a bit of hit to Intel’s ever so increasing core logic market shares. Indirectly, Intel is to be blamed for their inferior performance. They tried to make the transition too quickly and seem to have completely ignored the other aspects that create a successful transition. Add that to limited availability of PCIe high-end graphics card and elevated prices of DDR2 with inferior performance, you don’t exactly have a winner.

While Intel was strict on maintaining its stance with PCI Express and DDR2, third party board makers starting experimenting with AGPe (or AGP Express) and combination of DDR and DDR2 boards. In fact, there are quite a few motherboards in the market that are based on hybrid technologies. Some combined the use of DDR instead of DDR2 on the same board while others combined the use of AGP and PCIe to offer more flexibility to enthusiasts. Nonetheless, motherboard makers took it upon themselves to offer transition friendly features to the small, when compared to the general mainstream, enthusiast market.

At the beginning, chipset makers introduced their similar technology based core logics in the market to compete against Intel, but the market was still limited. In fact, VIA didn’t even had a PCIe chipset with DDR2 until the launch of the PT series. SiS was also behind with their aftermarket core logics, but at least their boards were visible even though they are not successors. Up until this point, Intel received all the attention, whether positive or negative, and buyers had no choice but to go with Intel.

Well, all of that has changed. VIA recently introduced their latest PT series of chipsets that boast PCI Express, DDR, DDR2, AGP and VIA Vinyl audio capabilities. All three chipsets are quite a handful when it comes to on-board features and the easy transition efforts by VIA. What you find may surprise you? What else does VIA packs in their chipsets? While we don’t have the performance numbers, we certainly received the core information that many of you will be interested in. Join us as we further continue our analysis of VIA’s PT series of chipsets…

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