VIA K8T900 Chipset Launched For AMD Platform

MojoDog writes " VIA has launched their new K8T900 chipset for the AMD platform this morning and HotHardware.com has a full analysis with benchmarks of the new platform. VIA is jumping into the dual PCI Express Graphics arena as well with this offering with their 'Rapid Fire' technology, which currently only supports their MultiChrome Dual GPU setups. However, NVIDIA and ATi will both have to provide the required driver level support for either SLI or CrossFire technology, which currently is not available on this new chipset. Beyond that, from a features and performance standpoint the K8T900 looks to be a solid solution."

Comments

in related news...

[Janek Kozicki]

Only 39 days left for the AMD vs. Intel dual core duel. Help them and sign the petition.

AMD has also published why they think that Intel will not participate...

Re:in related news...

[LWATCDR]

I really used to like AMD a lot more before I read that...
Really AMD has faster CPUs, that use less power, and cost less than Intel. Do they need snotty marketing?

Re:in related news...

[Epi-man]

Really AMD has faster CPUs, that use less power, and cost less than Intel. Do they need snotty marketing?

Well, maybe not snotty, but they need marketing. Intel still has a huge chunk of the market and perhaps more importantly, the mindshare outside the geek realm. Ask some of your non-technical friends what CPU they are using, and I would bet dollars to donuts they either know it is Intel, or don't know. After that, ask them if they know what AMD makes....

Re:in related news...

[InvalidError]

You're right for the power and performance... but price-wise, Athlon FX and X2 are not particularly cheaper than their closest Pentium equivalents - for example, the cheapest X2 costs nearly $100 more than the cheapest Pentium-D and both companies' top chips bear the same $1000-ish price tag. Below the upper-mid-range, things do become very much one-sided in AMD's favour though.

As for why they need marketing, that is a matter of mindshare. It does not matter how good your platform is if you are unable to get big buyers to place orders because they do not know about your products or are not aware of them being potentially superior to the stuff they usually order. We know some CEOs&others from large companies have become aware of the performance, scalability and power advantages of AMD64 chips by the fact that Dell has started making calls to notify its suppliers that it may start building Opteron boxes. A little more marketing could go a long way towards cracking tough nuts like Dell.

SLI works

[click2005]

The Tech Report got SLI working with this chipset. http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/via-k8t900/in dex.x?pg=5

"We were able to obtain a set of older NVIDIA drivers, revision 71.24, that don't include a chipset-based lockout for SLI. These drivers aren't new enough to support monsters like the GeForce 7800 GTX 512, but they work just fine with a couple of GeForce 6800 Ultras. Here's the K8T900 going head to head against the nForce4 SLI in SLI mode."

Not a chance

[Bullfish]

In the past I have had more trouble with Via chipsets on mobos than all other types combined (though SIS comes pretty damn close). Conflicts, bad drivers, wonky performance and incompatibilities. Further, looking on the web for solutions only ever brought me into contact with people who had the same problems, but no solutions. Via support at the same time was as responsive as the throttle on a Yugo.

I washed my hands of them and for Intel systems I'll stick to Intel chipsets and for AMD nVidia. Let someone else play guinea pig. I wouldn't buy their boards if they sold them for 10 bucks a pop.

Re:Not a chance

[gid]

I've had some pretty iffy via boards as well, but their newer stuff in my experience has been quite pleasant. My K8T800 board (Asus K8V SE Deluxe) has been rock solid.

Re:Not a chance

[daoine_sidhe]

Really? That's odd...I've had the exact opposite experience. Almost every nVidia chipset board I've seen or touched has been flaky as all hell and completely unstable...Via has been a dream every time in the last 5 years. In fact, we build probably 20-30 computers a week at my shop based on the AMD chip and the Via chipset. Takes almost no effort to do the install and have them stable.

Re:Not a chance

[Homology]

VIA releases docs to their chipsets, which nVidia does not (even for their network components, go figure), so VIA has better open source support. It's better to write drivers from specs than to write drivers with extensive reverse engineering. And I'd rather avoid the binary only-drivers that is so popular on Linux (but not available on *BSD that I use), and I'm sure I'm not the only one to install en extra NIC because the one on the motherboard is unsupported.

Open source is not just about the source code itself (for hardware), it's just as much (if not more) about availability of documentation so that drivers may be written and maintained. OpenBSD has had several campaigns (as well as ongoing work behind the scenes) for releasing documentation to hardware, and this has been quite successfull. However, the Linux crowds support of this has been lackluster. What good is nice open source applications if you have no current hardware to run it on?

Re:Not a chance

[gabebear]

I've had similar experiences: VIA being stable and nVidia being crap.

That said, I don't think the manufactuor of the chipset has as much to do with the mobo manufactuor's experience with the specific chipsets that the mobo is based on. I'm guessing that most VIA K8T900 boards will kick ass since they are pin for pin compatable with the K8T890 which mobo manufactuors have been using for awhile now.

Dual GPU's

[zymano]

This is what Sony and Microsoft should have done with their consoles instead of focusing on special chips.

Re:Dual GPU's

[Deliveranc3]

Seperate cores aren't important in graphics because all the difficult stuff is done in parallel.

Most of the die is already full of memory and other stuff not pixel pipelines but if they wanted to they could scale the pixel pipelines to an increadible degree.

The r520 is I believe a 24 pixel pipeline card so that's the amount of simultaneous operations it can process at once.

They make solid equipment.

[Sheetrock]

The last three systems I've owned has used them for memory interface, and never gave me a problem -- their embedded devices (audio, USB, etc.) have all performed well and saved me from the cost of additional peripherals... unlike other embeds I've used in the past.

However, with the increasing price of oil, I can't help wondering what the face of computing is going to look like five or ten years down the line. The average computer uses as much as the Mayflower worth of coal to run on any given day. Much of this is spent on wasteful peripherals we could do without, such as fancy 3D graphics cards or optical mice, but even more is being spent on processing power well beyond the needs of the average user.

Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication mean that a great deal of the electricity that goes into your computer is given off as heat. Techniques such as reversible or quantum computing hold much promise in the future for putting more energy into computation but today it is up to the consumer to safeguard the environment.

In a way, the argument is the same as with vehicles -- most people don't need a SUV or a top-of-the-line system but many choose to get them to compensate for inadequacies or because of marketing -- but with computers at least it is impossible to argue you are "safer" for having a faster system. Indeed, you are more likely to run viruses or worms without realizing it because you don't notice the hit in operating performance.

I've noticed that I've been holding on to computer equipment longer and longer these days. Oh sure, I have to fix a power supply here and a fan there, but besides slack engineering standards from software companies there is little reason to keep up with the hardware treadmill... and at least one compelling reason not to.

Re:They make solid equipment.

[merreborn]

The average computer uses as much as the Mayflower worth of coal to run on any given day

I don't know how much a "Mayflower" of coal is, but unless it's on the order of 10 pounds, you're way off, buddy.

We've been through this before.

Re:They make solid equipment.

[Kjella]

However, with the increasing price of oil, I can't help wondering what the face of computing is going to look like five or ten years down the line. The average computer uses as much as the Mayflower worth of coal to run on any given day. Much of this is spent on wasteful peripherals we could do without, such as fancy 3D graphics cards or optical mice, but even more is being spent on processing power well beyond the needs of the average user.

Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication mean that a great deal of the electricity that goes into your computer is given off as heat. Techniques such as reversible or quantum computing hold much promise in the future for putting more energy into computation but today it is up to the consumer to safeguard the environment.

Define wasteful. People like their computers with fast 3D cards and optical mice. In many ways you can say most of human activity is "wasteful", in that it makes no sense and consumes lots of resources. For example, a weekend before christmas I'm flying to another city to visit some friends and have a few beers. If you want to get all objective about it, I could buy some beers at the local store and drink them here, alone. Much less wasteful, eh?

As far as the "vast" consumption of energy a computer has, I doubt it makes a dent in most people's budget. What else would I be doing? Watching TV, oh another screen. Reading a book? Yeah, in a good reading light that is quite bright really. Driving somewhere to meet someone, club, pub wheteever? On the whole, I don't think my evenings in front of my computer are the most expensive ones, if you don't consider the sunk cost of purchasing it.

Quantum and reversible computing are way off. Even if they do were to come through (this is like talking about cold fusion...) there's no reason to believe they'll function as general-purpose CPUs. The rules that define what operations are reversible are odd at best. And the essence is to control a piece of energy so well we do not incur entropy, which seems to be cutting it awfully close to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It's an interesting line of pursuit but I'd be more surprised if it succeeded than if it didn't.

I've noticed that I've been holding on to computer equipment longer and longer these days. Oh sure, I have to fix a power supply here and a fan there, but besides slack engineering standards from software companies there is little reason to keep up with the hardware treadmill... and at least one compelling reason not to.

Best point of the whole post. If you look at the total life-cycle, the short time it's burning electricity in your house is nothing. Imagine all the consumption that goes into the manufacture and shipping of each chip, including the machines to produce them as well as dispose of them. Environmentally, I think you're better off making your gear last longer than looking at how much energy it consumes right now. An environmental box is one not located at a landfill.

Re:They make solid equipment.

[tpgp]

The average computer uses as much as the Mayflower worth of coal to run on any given day.

I'm sorry - I don't understand metric; how many libaries of congress per furlong is that?

why?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Why you need a duel? Intel has publically accepted that their dual-core design is not optimal for dual core CPUs.

The real competetion for AMD will be probably released in the first quarter of 2006. Why on earth do you need a duel? To confirm something that even intel has (indirectly) confirmed?

Re:VIA Who?

[GweeDo]

Via has actually produced a number of quality chipsets for AMD processors.

Why all the Via Hate?

[dgkulzer]

I have noticed alot of people complaining about Via chipsets whenever their name comes up but after trying out their competition I wonder how much this is warranted. I had used Via chipsets in my S754 based system (Asus K8V Deluxe) with no problem but I wanted to upgrade to a board with more SATA connecters so I purchased a Nvidia N4 based motherboard from MSI. I wanted the Nvidia chipset because of its firewall capabilities and it sounded like it had alot of nice features. Right away I found out that the Nvidia IDE driver was very problematic. I found quite a few forum posts where it was recommended that the IDE driver should not be installed. I also found out that installing the firewall/ethernet software would cause problems, something that is also not uncommon. I did many winxp reinstalls and I never did get the board to work correctly. I ended up getting a budget mb from Asrock (939 Dual SataII) with a ULI chipset and have not had a problem since.

Its altitude y'all

[pcnetworx1]

I swear, with how often people say "Nvidia is better than VIA" or "Intel is better than Nvidia" etc, etc. I think the chipsets perform differently based on altitude!

This is no joke for me though. I live in Pittsburgh, Pa (mountainous) and I had a very nice P4 based Celeron 2.0 Ghz machine on a VIA chipset, gave me very few problems at all, even ran games like Call of Duty very well.

Then I proceeded to be a good brother and gave the machine to my sister who lives in Boston, Ma (Sea level). And it was crap! It started freezing after using it for awhile, the BIOS was having issues, the network card would drop connections. It felt like a PC Chips board, but it was an XFX!!!! I didn't even ship the board, I took it up personally when I visited in my car!!!!!!

So altitude is all I got at this point... (still screwy)

Re:I don't trust via

[dave_f1m]

Oh, come on. You can't blame the piece of shit that was the Creative Labs Live! on the motherboard chipset. I mean, really, those drivers were a disaster waiting to happen. Do the research. Creative sucks. They refused for years to make functional drivers and follow standards. Now there is a company that I will never buy from again (actually, I got a Live! given to me, and was happy when it caught on fire and I was forced to buy a real card. No, the fire wasn't Creative's fault, but the shitty drivers sure as hell were.)

I love me my K8T890 boxes

[hirschma]

VIA+Linux is just a great combination - everything is supported in the kernel, everything just works. No install hassles at all, no driver hell.

I have a pair of AMD boxes with this chipset that are just super stable, super fast, and crazy cheap to build. What's not to like? The ASUS boards that I use have a fine Marvell gigE chip on the PCIe bus, and everything just hums along.

What other chipsets have real, non-backwards engineered drivers in the kernel? SIS? ULi? The VIA stuff is getting a little hard to find :(

via sure has taken alot of crap for the KT133

[atarione]

everytime I see VIA mentioned hordes of people who had problems with KT133 chipsets come out of the woodwork... but to be fair the KT133 chipset was total crap.

it's too bad they didn't realize that and start out with the KT133A to begin with.

I have a Shuttle AK31A v3.1 (KT266A board) i have had this since 2001 running 24/7 as a Domain Controller for my homenetwork. It has given my no grief... it has been 100% stable since day one (actually building this computer w/ the AK31A was the fastest smoothist PC build I have ever had.

The only thing that kinda sucks is the PCI implementation on the KT266A seems to cause rather shabby Raid performance ... I have a 3ware Escalade TX7000 and when I previously had it set for raid 0 the write speeds were pretty crappy when Installed in this Via board... Since I am not using this raid card for raid 0 but am using it for Raid 1 now I no longer really care.... as long as the data continues to be uncorrupted.

blah blah blah... anyway I will wait and see, It will be interesting to see if ATI and Nvida decide to allow Crossfire and SLI to work with these boards since the article seems to indicate that crossfire and SLI should be possible if allowed by driver support?

price

[stonefoz]

does this mean there will finaly be some mobo come out for 64 that don't cost an arm and a leg?