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VIA's New PT Chipsets
TheTechLounge writes "Today VIA is announcing their new PT series of chipsets to the masses. The chipsets that make up the PT series represent the first real alternatives to Intel's chipsets for the Pentium 4 platform and aim to ease the transition to PCI-Express and DDR-II. All of VIA's PT products are covered under a ten-year cross license agreement between VIA and Intel. As expected, the majority of motherboard manufacturers will be using the PT chipsets in upcoming boards. Some of these companies include Abit, Asus, Chaintech, Biostar, DFI, EPoX, Gigabyte, MSI and Soltek. The PT chipsets cover a wide range of PCI-Express, AGP and IGP solutions for the Intel platform. VIA's new PT chipsets include the PT880 Pro, the PT894 and the PT894 Pro."
As for pricing, the PT880 Pro will be priced competitively with the current Intel 865 solutions on the market while the PT894 will be priced to compete with the current Intel 915 boards and the PT894 Pro competing with 915/925 boards.
The fact that they don't mention price until the end and in such a lackluster way it makes it tough for me to get excited about this. I really would like to see a less expensive alternative to Intel, not just "priced competitively".
Plus, the fact that the benchmarks don't show anything too exciting doesn't help either.
But competition is always a good thing, I just wish the only selling point didn't seem like "We aren't Intel".