VIA is perhaps most notable for its contributions as a supplier of chipsets for AMD's Athlon XP/64 processor families. The company's work with Intel's offerings has ranged, over time, from clandestine manufacturing of unlicensed core logic (in Intel's eyes, at least) to the manufacture of a respectably leading edge product in the form of its PT880.
Up until now, however, all of VIA's products have featured AGP graphics connectivity and it doesn't take a gifted mind to realize that the industry is trudging forward with PCI Express. So, while all of its competitors have already made that pivotal transition on the AMD side, VIA is now unveiling its family of Pentium 4 chipsets with PCI Express support.
The move is significant for a couple of major reasons. Not only does it allow VIA to compete against Intel, one-upping whatever plans NVIDIA and ATI might have to contend for Pentium 4 chipset supremacy, but it also represents the first chipset family outside of NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI to officially support multiple display adapters, adding appeal to the Pentium 4 in financial and content creation markets.
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Preview:
Hothardware
VIA PT894 & PT880 Pro Chipset previews collected from different sources.
Tweaktown
Tech Report
PC Perspective
Hexus
