ABIT Brings Out VIA KT880 Mainboard with QBM DRAM Support

by Anton Shilov
10/09/2003 | 12:47 PM

ABIT is very likely to bring the first ever QBM-supporting platform into the market by releasing its VIA KT880-based mainboard KV7II later this Fall, I learned over AMDBoard.com. The mainboard will utilize the dual-channel core-logic for AMD processors from VIA and support the entire Socket A CPU family. Additionally, the ABIT KV7II is the first actual nearly official confirmation of VIA KT880 existence. 

VIA KT880 core-logic was designed by VIA in order to compete with NVIDIA nForce2 for the fastest Socket A chipset ever developed. The company did not need to make a new product from the ground up since it has a dual-channel Pentium 4 chipset called PT880 due to come in Q4 2003. Just like KT880, the core-logic for NetBurst processors supports conventional PC3200, PC2700 DDR SDRAM as well as Quad Band Memory at up to 133MHz (effective 533MHz).

Frankly speaking, because no processor can utilize 8.50GB/s or more memory bandwidth, QBM DRAM is an advantage neither for Intel nor AMD-based systems nowadays. Even though QBM modules may be cheaper compared to high-speed DDR and DDR-II solutions, they are unavailable and may be even more expensive than competing technologies initially.

ABIT’s KV7II mainboards is not too advanced, but still an interesting solutions for good-old AMD Athlon XP processors:

• Supports Socket A AMD Athlon XP processors with 200/266/333/400MHz FSB;
• VIA KT880 chipset, including VT8237 I/O controller;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100, PC2700 or up to 2GB of PC3200 memory or QBM533 DRAM; Note that for dual-channel configurations you have to install a pair of identical memory modules;
• 5/6 PCI slots and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 integrated controller;
• 2 Serial ATA-150 ports;
• 10/100Mb/s Ethernet controller from VIA;
• 6/8 USB 2.0 ports;
• 6-channel CMedia CMI 9739A audio solution;
• Overclocking, tuning, ABIT Engineered functions;
• ATX Form Factor.

Pricing and availability information was not touched upon.