VIA: on KT400, P4X400, P4X600 and P4X800

by Anna Filatova
06/12/2002 | 10:57 PM

During Computex show in Taipei this year VIA carried out a technical seminar where they shared some exciting details about the upcoming chipsets including KT400, P4X400, P4X600 and even P4X800. In fact, we have already told you almost everything about the specs of these solutions (see this news story) that is why we suggest dwelling on the most exciting part this time: the launching schedule for all these chipsets.

• Dual-channel P4X600 chipset, which was supposed to start shipping in summer is about to come out somewhat later now: in September, and in summer we will only see the first samples coming. This chipset is also claimed to support not only PC2100 but also PC2700 DDR SDRAM. In fact, adding faster memory support is not so necessary, because the bandwidth of the dual-channel PC2100 DDR SDRAM is more than enough for 533MHz Quad Pumped bus, however why not make it if there is a good chance?
• In summer VIA is going to please us with the launching of the new P4X400 chipset (DDR400, AGP 8x, 533MB/sec V-Link, VT8235 South Bridge), which will differ from P4X333 by the DDR400 support. The company didn’t disclose the exact launching date however...
• The most interesting thing however, seemed to be KT400 chipset for AMD Athlon processors. The chipset is almost completely ready, it is already sampling, however, no exact launching schedule has been mentioned yet. Everything will depend on JEDEC and how fast (if ever) they will approve of DDR400 memory specification as a standard, as well as on the fact if SiS will be able to offer anything better than the already existing SiS745. As far as I understand, SiS will not be able to suggest anything new here that is why the launching date for KT400 will be determined only by one single fact: VIA’s desire (in the meanwhile, VIA seems to be about to wait for another while, as we told you here).
• As for P4X800 chipset (dual-channel solution with DDR II support), this is still a solution from the very far-away future. It is expected to arrive some time in 2003.