General Features:

As it is not a secret anymore, VIA’s three chipsets are codenamed PT880 Pro, PT894 and PT894 Pro. While the chipsets contain majority of the same features, they also have some exclusive options that set them apart from Intel as well as their own counterparts.

For starters, all core logic chipsets include support for PCI Express graphics standard for the next generation of consumer level graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA. Along with the PCI Express standard, all three chipsets also has support for flexible memory controller, which will feature either DDR or DDR2 on production boards by third party manufacturers. To make the transition smoother and to shorten the gap between DDR and DDR2, motherboard manufacturers can choose to enable either DDR or DDR2 on the latest VIA based core logics. Now, you have to keep in mind that the chipset can have either DDR or DDR2 on the end production boards, not both at the same time. While some may prefer both DDR and DDR2 options on the same board, it is usually a wise decision to stay with one standard. This removes bottlenecks and standard incompatibility in the future, should there are some. Besides, the more features the board has the higher the price. And for the enthusiast crowd, even the slightest change can ruin the board’s overclocking capabilities.

Perhaps one of the most anticipated and interesting features on all three VIA chipsets is the support for 1066MHz system bus. While there’s only one Intel microprocessor with the ability to operate at 1066MHz, Intel is certainly expected to introduce newer microprocessors based on the same architecture throughout the year. This is more or less an exciting functionality. The only thing we have to wait for now are forthcoming microprocessors at affordable prices, which doesn’t seem too realistic currently.

Along with the three chipsets, VIA has also introduced a new south bridge, which will be featured on the enthusiast level PT series of motherboards. The south bridge brings some enterprise level changes, which were previously exclusive to high-end workstation and server boards. We will get into the south bridge feature set later in the preview.

While the aforementioned features are identical to all three chipsets, they have something that makes them exclusive in their product line. We must admit that VIA has done an impressive work separating the three. Not only that, but many of the transitional features are left up to the motherboard manufacturers to decide, which should bring a plethora of variants of equivalent motherboards to the market, especially from manufacturers like Gigabyte who has a tendency to introduce quite a few models with different prefixes. While the options are limitless thus far, you will indeed be confused if motherboard makers truly do introduce a few variants of each chipsets with different feature sets.

With that said, let’s move from the general discussion to a more specific one in the following pages.

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