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VIA K8T900 Chipset Launched For AMD Platform

Posted by Zonk on from the shinnnnny dept.

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."

4 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. in related news... by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

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  2. SLI works by click2005 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."

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  3. Not a chance by Bullfish · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Not a chance by Homology · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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?