VIA P4X266A based mainboard with VPX-64 chip
by Anna Filatova
12/06/2001 | 05:16 PM
VIA announced its new VPX-64 chip (VT8101), which is none other but PCI 64bit/66MHz (33MHz) controller. The first mention of this chip dates back to the far away November 2000 (see this news story), and now this product has been finally announced.
VPX chip packed into 256-pin PGA package 27mm x 27mm is connected instead of the existing AGP/XIP interface of VIA Apollo P4X266, P4X266A and Pro266T chipsets, supports up to 4 PCI 64bit/66MHz (33MHz) slots and up to 6 traditional PCI 32bit/33MHz slots.
They also reports that the upcoming VPX versions will be able to get connected into a cascade allowing PCI 64bit 66MHz and AGP interfaces to be used simultaneously. Unfortunately, we don’t know yet where this feature will be implemented. As is known (see this news story), the next VPX version called VPX II, will be connected instead of AGP 8x port and will support PCI-X. However, the availability of an AGP port doesn’t matter that much for the server market, our VPX is actually targeted for. Some ATI Rage XL is usually more than enough over there.
The price as well as the shipping schedule for the new VPX-64 chip haven’t been yet revealed.