VIA K8T900 Previews

VIA has announced a new chipset that it hopes will be adopted by a new generation of AMD enthusiasts, the K8T900. As well as bringing together technologies and features such as RapidFire, DriveStation and V-MAP, the K8T900 also introduces MultiChrome, a multi-graphics card technology built around S3 Graphics’ recently announced S27 Chrome series. S3 Graphics is a VIA subsidiary, and these new GPUs will be manufactured on an advanced Fujitsu 90nm manufacturing process and promises to deliver the best Performance-per-Watt in the industry.

..If K8T900-based boards turn out to be cheaper than their nF4 equivalents, and if VIA can support NVIDIA SLI and / or ATI Crossfire at the driver level, they could be onto a winner.

bit-tech - First Look: VIA K8T900

Our quick first look at the K8T900 is promising. VIA’s new chipset largely keeps up with the nForce4 SLI, and it might gain some ground once VIA completes its SATA drivers with NCQ support. The K8T900’s spec sheet gives it a couple of advantages over the nForce4 SLI and the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition, and we’ve demonstrated today that its dual-GPU performance is quite solid, both with S3’s MultiChrome and, when allowed, with SLI. The new nForce4 SLI X16 doesn’t appear to perform any better than the older nForce4 SLI in most cases, so the K8T900 may not be completely overmatched against the newer dual 16-lane chipsets from NVIDIA and ATI.

TheTechReport - VIA’s K8T900 chipset