The manufacturers are expected to show samples with new Pentium 4 chipsets i850E, i845E and i845G from Intel, SIS 645DX and SIS 648 from SIS and a new AMD Athlon chipset from VIA, VIA KT400.

Let us remind you that i850E and i845E are new version of i850 and i845 supporting CPUs with 533MHz bus, while i845G is a version of i845E with an absolutely new graphics core. SIS 645DX is a new revision of SIS 645 supporting 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus. As for SIS 648, it is of much greater interest for us. This novelty uses DDR400/DDR333, supports 400/533MHz Quad Pumped Bus and AGP 8x. It also incorporates a new South Bridge, SIS 962 with USB 2.0 support. VIA KT400 for Athlon CPUs is another revolutionary product. It will support AGP 8x, DDR400/DDR333, USB 2.0 and a two times faster V-Link bus.

An official from ASUS told us that at CeBIT this company will demonstrate a complete range of mainboards based on the above-mentioned chipsets: P4T533 (i850E), P4B533 and P4B533-E (i845E), P4B533-VM (i845G), P4S8X (SiS 648), P4S533 (SiS 645DX), A7V8X (VIA KT400). Furthermore, ASUS will show two already announced mainboards for Socket A processors with DDR333 support - A7V333 (VIA KT333) and A7S333 (SiS 745).

The new chipsets from Intel will be announced only in May, but it is quite possible that SIS and VIA will choose CeBIT time to announce new chipsets of their own.