You have probably noticed a very evident trend of the today's market. Most computer manufacturersstrive for making cheaper PCs, which are expected to be closer to home electric appliances than tocomplicated electronic equipment. As a result, integrated solutions keep on gaining more and more popularity.Of course, the higher is the demand, the greater is the supply. And now it is not only SiS that makeschipsets with integrated graphics and sound. Even Intel offers now its own solution of the kind - Intel810, which is a set of core logic "all in one", intended for Intel Celeron processors.

It is quite natural that in this situation another Taiwanese chipset manufacturer - VIA, which is nowthe coolest core logic manufacturer for AMD K6, K6-2 and K6-III processors, couldn't help creating its ownintegrated solution for Socket 7 processors. This solution is represented by VIA Apollo MVP4 chipset,which is the main hero of the present article.

VIA Apollo MVP4 chipset consists of two chips - north bridge VT8501 and south bridge VT82C686A.

The north bridge includes the core, which was borrowed from its predecessor VIA Apollo MVP3, and AGP 2.0compatible 64bit graphics part developed by Trident company, which is none other than a slightly modifiedBlade3D graphics accelerator. So, this combination is supposed to provide satisfactory performance in systemsbased on 66MHz Socket 7 processors as well as on 100MHz ones in ordinary office tasks, in 3D gamingapplications and during DVD playback.

As for the south bridge, we can say that the use of a relatively new VT82C686A microchip provides avery nice combination of great opportunities and low proce. In particular, VT82C686A supports newHDD interface - UltraDMA/66 and AC97 compatible audio codec, which allows integrating a low-cost on-boardsoft-modem and sound card as well as the AMR-slot. All these features undoubtedly add even more to theattractiveness of MVP4, which is quite rich in different functions.

The chipset structure is rather common: the traditional 33MHz PCI bus connects the south and the northbridges. And a part of the system memory is used as video memory of the chipset graphics subsystem.The architecture of VIA Apollo MVP4 is shown on the system chart below:

We tested VIA Apollo MVP4 with the mainboard by a not so famous company - Super Grace. This mainboardof AT format has 2 ISA-, 3 PCI- and 2 DIMM-slots and 512KB L2 cache.

In our review we are going to compare the performance of VIA Apollo MVP4 with the results shown byVIA Apollo MVP3 chipset on Chaintech 5AGM2 mainboard. Since VIA Apollo MVP4 has an integrated 2D/3Dcore - Trident Blade3D, we will take the performance of VIA Apollo MVP3 based mainboard first with agraphics accelerator based on Trident Blade3D 8MB and then with ASUS V3400 TNT based on nVidia Riva TNT chip.

Besides the components listed above, the testing system was configured as follows:

• AMD K6-2 400 and AMD K6-III 400 CPUs;
• 128MB SDRAM PC100;
• IBM DJNA 372200 HDD;
• MS Windows 98 SE;
• Frame-buffer size 8MB.

North Bridge

The main specs of VT8501 are:

• Integrated 2D/3D AGP graphics with DVD hardware acceleration;
• 100MHz front side / memory bus;
• Memory controller supports up to 768MB PC100 SDRAM, VCM SDRAM, EDO, FP with or without ECC;
• Compatible with all Socket 7 processors;
• Synchronous/Asynchronous AGP, PCI and memory buses;
• 66, 75, 83, 95 and 100MHz FSB capabilities;
• 492-pin BGA package.

Well, at first sight everything seems very similar to VIA Apollo MVP3. But, it is just the very firstimpression. All the principal differences lie a bit deeper and deal mostly with DRAM controller.As you probably remember, the working frequency of the system memory in MVP3 equaled either to FSB frequencyor to AGP one, i.e. 66 or 100MHz correspondingly (in case of 100MHz processors). This was a perfect way toachieve pseudo-asynchronous memory functioning and compatibility with the old non-PC100 DIMM moduleswith the new processors. And at present the situation is just the opposite. The memory frequency of MVP4coincides either with processor bus frequency or with the frequency of the special built-in de-skew PLL(Phase Lock Loop) circuit providing 100MHz. In other words, it means that there is no way left to get66MHz memory frequency with a 100MHz CPU. However, the memory may still work at 100MHz even if a CPU with66MHz FSB is installed. It actually gives the owners of the older 66MHz processors every right to bereally glad: VIA Apollo MVP4 can noticeably (by a few percents) increase the overall performance oftheir systems due to a quicker memory access.

The second innovation is VCM (Virtual Channel Memory) SDRAM support. This technology pushed forwardby its developer - NEC - allows opening up to 16 independent cached memory channels, which will undoubtedlyhelp to reduce the delays and the wait states while transferring the data from different banks. However,now VCM SDRAM memory is not available in the market, which is not that surprising, actually. If youremember, VIA has always been known for its liking to exotic memory types. Take for instance, BEDO RAM,which could be used with VIA Apollo VPX/VP1/VP2 chipsets.

But besides the attractive new features, this chipset still suffers some old problems. For example,the SDRAM timing traditionally looks like 6-1-1-1-2-1-1-1. It means that VIA Apollo MVP4 works with thememory slower than the chipsets manufactured by its competitors, which already started utilizingthe 5-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 scheme in their products quite a while ago. We can't tell why again VIA failed to solvethis problem, but no one will deny that it still exists.

Integrated graphics

Below you can see a specs list for Trident rCADE3D graphics core, which is a lighter version of TridentBlade3D:

• 64-bit 2D/3D graphics processor;
• From 2 to 8MB frame buffer located in the system memory;
• Integrated 24-bit 230MHz RAMDAC;
• Peak triangle generation rate - 2.5 mln per second;
• Fill rate speed - 110 mln pixels per second;
• Anisotropic and trilinear filtering support;
• 32-bit rendering;
• 11-level MIP-mapping;
• Full anti-aliasing support;
• DVD and MPEG-2 hardware acceleration;
• API DirectX 6 and OpenGL support.

As we can see judging by these features, the graphics part of MVP4 can easily compete with thegraphics cards dominating in the Low-End market based on S3 Savage3D and Intel 740. Besides, the graphicfeatures of VIA Apollo MVP4 are very similar to those of i810. However, there is again one single problem,which is namely the relations between the MVP4 graphics memory and UMA (Unified Memory Architecture).We have already mentioned that MVP4 utilizes a part of its system memory for the graphics needs(the size of this memory space is defined through BIOS Setup). While the whole data exchange with thegraphics processor is carried out through AGP. This, of course, means that AGP imposes a certain restrictionon the data transfer rates: we get only 533MB/sec instead of 2-3GB/sec provided by local graphics memory.In other words, the integrated graphics accelerator in MVP4 works with the data 5 times slower than in caseof an independent graphics card even if it is based on the same Trident Blade3D chip.

However, the real influence of UMA utilization doesn't lead to such tragic consequences as you areprobably expecting it to. The diagram below shows the performance of MVP4 working with textures comparedto that of the combo: MVP3+Trident Blade3D in 3DMark 99 MAX. Here we used AMD K6-2 400 CPU:

The performance drop by almost 1.5 times is not a very high price for a much more significant reductionof the graphics memory bandwidth. However, the average performance in 3D is also worth looking at. Hereare the results obtained in the synthetic benchmark 3DMark 99 MAX:

As we see, the integrated graphics of VIA Apollo MVP4 unfortunately turns out much slower than theindependent solutions. And if we compare this result with that of the combination MVP3+Riva TNT, thenthe performance of MVP4 will seem just awful. However, even if we compare the results obtained with thoseshown by i810 based mainboards with the integrated graphics, we can hardly be happy again. Intel'sarchitecture - DirectAGP introduced in the combination of i810 with the graphics core i752 proved capableof showing 1.5-2 times higher performance than MVP4.

The only thing, which can console the fans of integrated solutions from VIA, is the 3D image quality:

And now a few words about 2D. Thank goodness, the performance here appeared up to the mark and wedon't have any reasons to be disappointed:

MVP4 performance in 2D graphics proved quite satisfactory and comfortable in all main office applications.As far as the integrated RAMDAC quality is concerned, there were no unpleasant surprises here as well.At the resolution set to 1024x768 the picture was clear, without any blurring. That's why you can be prettysure that a 15" monitor won't conflict with the mainboard based on this chipset.

South Bridge

One of the most important advantages of VIA Apollo MVP4 is the VT82C686A microchip chosen asthe chipset south bridge. Here is the list of its main specs:

• Integrated AC-97 codec;
• Integrated I/O controller;
• Built-in hardware monitoring;
• Built-in IDE-controller with ATA-66 support
• Advanced PC power management;
• Supports ATAPI compliant devices including DVD devices;
• 4 USB-ports;
• ACPI;
• 352-pin BGA package.

In other words, we can say that it supports almost all interfaces. The built-in IDE-controller, whichsupports UltraDMA/66, provides the data transfer rate from the harddisk up to 66MB/sec. Four USB portsallow connecting up to 508 USB devices. Of course, both these features are not so widely demanded in reallife, because the today's harddisks haven't yet reached such high surface read rate and 508 USB devices mayappear only in a nightmare.

However, the integrated AC-97 codec allows integrating soft-modems and sound cards as well as usingthe additional ones. Naturally, MVP4 based boards will also have the AMR-slot. And due to the integratedLM78-like controller, the hardware monitoring in MVP4 based mainboards is carried out without anyadditional microchips. So, all the things mentioned above imply that MVP4 based mainboards promiseto be rather cheap.

Performance

And now let's take a look at the overall performance of VIA Apollo MVP4 based mainboard and compareit to that of analogous systems based on VIA Apollo MVP3. We would like to start with office applications:

Well, here MVP4 proved up to our expectations: its performance appeared somewhat lower than that shownby MVP3 combination with any graphics card. And the main thing that leads to such results is the UMAarchitecture, which prevents MVP4 from performing better than any other classical chipsets. However, thelag we see in Winstone99 is quite insignificant and shouldn't be regarded as a serious cause for concern.

Ok, and what about the games? Let's pay our attention to Quake2:

As we have predicted, the high quality 3D acceleration proved beyond the power of MVP4 and it appearedan outsider here. First, the AGP bus can't satisfy all the growing demands of the today's games withoutthe local graphics memory, which is simply absent in our chipset. Second, the performance of Trident Blade3Din games also leaves much to be desired (compare it to Riva TNT and you'll get the difference). And third,the processor with the K6 core intended for VIA Apollo MVP4 based mainboards doesn't have a high qualityarithmetical FPU, which is so important for modern games. So, the resume sounds as follows: it is almostimpossible to play on MVP4 based systems. And we can state that Intel managed to easily beat VIA here:i810 provides quite satisfactory performance in 3D graphics.

Conclusions

VIA Apollo MVP4 chipset performed well in office applications, in games however, it suffered a totalfailure. The competing solution from Intel - i810 - suits better for this purpose, but is more expensiveas well. The system based on the integrated solution from Intel will cost almost $40 more. That's whywe stick to the opinion that VIA Apollo MVP4 is a better low-cost variant for an office. As for the games,you'd better forget about MVP4: it's not the right choice here.

And as far as VIA's future plans are concerned, the next offspring by VIA is expected to be ApolloProMedia intended for Celeron/Pentium II/Pentium III. Here they are going to shift from Trident Blade3Dcore and UMA-architecture to an absolutely new memory technology and graphics part developed by S3.Well, let's have patience and wait…