VIA’s Plans or No More "Transitional Solutions"

by Anna Filatova
12/29/2001 | 05:27 AM

As we read over here, VIA is planning a lot of interesting things to be implemented in the chipset field. Unlike the previous times when we were simply offering you a long and boring list of similar solutions with their due dates, now everything has become much easier to understand. Certainly, there is one platform, which has nearly sunk into oblivion completely (we are speaking about Socket370), and as for all other platforms, almost everything possible has been already introduced. Nevertheless, VIA still has a few very interesting new solutions ahead. Here they are:

Socket A

• The closest newcomer is KT333. It should be launched some time in Q1 2002. The information about this chipset being very similar to KT266A and having nothing new besides the support of the new PC2700 DDR SDRAM (see this news story) has been confirmed.
• The next chipset to come is… oh, god! …KT333A (again this "A"). It is expected to appear about a quarter later than its "pseudo-new" predecessor. Besides the support of PC2700 DDR SDRAM, it will also boast V-Link bus between the bridges with twice as high bandwidth of 533MB/sec and AGP 8x support. And that’s seems to be it. If VIA goes on like that launching chipsets with the “A” index one after another, they will one day find out that the customers are completely indifferent to the chipset without this "A". As they will think that the normally working chipset is to come out later and the one without "A" in the name is just the first try.
• In Q2 2002 we will also see a new mobile modification of KT333A called KM333 with a new Zoetrope graphics core.
• And in Q3 (or maybe even in Q2) 2002 we will welcome a new K8HTB chipset for the first 64bit Hammer processors from AMD. As for the details, we don’t know much yet. We can only tell you that this solution will support AGP 8x and 533MB/sec V-link bus.

• In Q1 2002 VIA will announce its P4X333 chipset. It will have all the innovations, which will appear in AMD platforms only with the KT333A chipset, namely: PC2700 DDR SDRAM support, AGP 8x and 533MB/sec V-Link bus. Besides, this chipset will also support 133MHz system bus (533MHz Quad Pumped Bus). Strange as it might seem, but there is no mention about the QBM memory (see this news story). However, this puzzle will be solved below, so keep reading :)
• In Q2 2002 we will see the mobile version of P4X333 called P4M333 with the same Zoetrope graphics core as KM333.
• In the same Q2 2002 VIA will introduce a new chipset aka P4X600, which is exactly the one to get the notorious QBM SDRAM support with the maximum bandwidth of 5.4GB/sec. Of course, it will also support AGP 8x, 533MB/sec V-Link bus and 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus. So, VIA once again decided to take its time and to update its chipsets thoroughly.