Conclusion

Well, no sensation happened. Another VIA’s attempt to create a chipset outperforming NVIDIA nForce2 didn’t succeed. Due to NVIDIA’s intellectual DASP unit, nForce2 Ultra 400 remains the fastest Socket A chipset today.

However, this doesn’t at all mean that VIA KT880 is a failure as a product. In fact, summing up all the factors you take into account when making your decision about a certain product, I have to admit that VIA KT880 will be an extremely successful chipset. Look here. There is only one major drawback about VIA KT880: not the fastest performance. Is this a dramatic drawback? I don’t think so, because the average lag between VIA KT880 and NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 is only 1.3%. But unlike its rival, VIA KT880 boasts the whole lot of advantages. Firstly, KT880 is less expensive. Secondly, it boasts more advanced features, such as SerialATA and 8 USB 2.0 ports support. Thirdly, its overclocking potential is not any worse than that of nForce2, while the VIA chipset doesn’t suffer from the problems of nForce2 during overclocking (when the BIOS gets corrupt and the frequencies “float” around). I believe that these arguments are more than enough to state that VIA KT880 will definitely turn into a more attractive purchase in the nearest future than an NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 based mainboard.

And in conclusion I would like to mention that the ASUS A7V880 mainboard we have just reviewed is a worthy product on the new core logic set from VIA. It is inexpensive, rather fast and stable. It has all the necessary features, boasts successful design and suits greatly for overclocking experiments. In fact, if ASUS solves all the above pointed issues with the BIOS, this mainboard would become the No.1 I would recommend to all Socket A platform owners. And in the meanwhile we are a little bit concerned with the slightly limited opportunities in terms of CPU overclocking.