More and more mainboard makers report about intentions to launch VIA KT400A powered mainboards for the latest AMD Socket A processors. Even despite of the fact that the KT400A is not likely to be a best-seller, as AMD’s positions on the market are not really strong today while VIA faces fierce competition from NVIDIA and its nForce-series chipsets, there is still some space for a new core-logic, especially if we suppose that VIA will phase out its KT400 or KT333CF after the KT400A is launched.

Our sources in ASUSTeK showed us the specifications of the upcoming A7V400 mainboard based on yet-unannounced VIA KT400A chipset:

• Supports all Socket A Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron processors, including Barton CPUs;
• VIA KT400A chipset with VT8235 I/O Controller;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC1600, PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM;
• 6 PCI and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel integrated ATA-33/66/100/133 controller;
• Promise 20378 controller, supporting 2-channel Serial ATA-150 RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 modes) and 1 Parallel ATA port;
• 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet Adapter from 3Com;
• 6 USB 2.0 ports;
• 2 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports;
• Supports ASUS’ Wireless Kit for expansion;
• Integrated AC`97 6-channel ADI AD1980 audio solution with SP/DIF connectors;
• Loads of additional functions, including ASUS POST Reporter, ASUS MyLogo2, ASUS EZ Flash, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS C.O.P. (CPU Overheating Protection), ASUS CrashFree BIOS 2, ASUS Instant Music, Power Loss Restart and so on;
• Overclocking and tuning functions, including CPU, memory, and AGP voltage adjustments, FSB settings from 100 to 227MHz with 1MHz step, adjustable FSB/DDR ratio, fixed AGP/PCI frequencies;
• ATX Form-factor.

The mainboard seems to be really advanced and feature-rich, thus, I doubt it will be cheap. Therefore, its success is not so obvious, as computer hardware enthusiasts are now more interested in a bit more perspective Intel CPUs, while ordinary SOHO customers are not going to pay a lot for mainboard, even if it is as advanced as the A7V400.

Currently no dates and timeframes are specified for ASUS A7V400 availability.

See also:

- Some Words About VIA KT400A Peculiarities and Performance
- VIA Changed its Chipset Plans: What to Expect and What Not to Expect
- Soltek’s Upcoming Mainboards for Intel and AMD Processors
- ABIT’s Upcoming Mainboards for Intel and AMD Processors
- Gigabyte to Showcase i875P, i865, VIA KT400A, K8T400M, 8M400 and AMD-8000 Based Mainboards at CeBIT