X-bit labs

ASUS A7V880 Mainboard Review. First Look at VIA KT880 Chipset

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 04/19/2004 | 09:05 AM ]

VIA KT880 chipset with the dual-channel memory proves the fact that Athlon XP shouldn’t be pushed into oblivion yet. If AMD Athlon 64 is the latest and greatest AMD offspring, then Athlon XP with the contemporary chipsets also can offer quite an attractive bunch of features and opportunities. With the launching of KT880 VIA hopes to finally outpace NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 due to the implementation of two memory channels and a bunch of additional functions. Let’s see if this is the case!

Table of contents:

• VIA KT880: Quick Glance
  
• ASUS A7V880 – First VIA KT880 Based Mainboard
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

Is Socket A dead? Well, I would say it is a way too early to announce that. Yes, AMD is actively promoting its CPUs with new AMD64 architecture in all market segments, but it in no way means that the manufacturer is about to discontinue the production and technical support of its processors for the good old Socket A. Even the release of the new low-cost Athlon XP processors based on Paris core and designed for Socket754 processor form-factor should not push the Socket A solutions into oblivion. According to AMD’s current plans, the peaceful co-existence of Socket A, Socket754 and Socket939 processors will stay for at least another year or so.

It is true the current Socket A Athlon XP processor family is more than successful. Their production cost is low enough while the demand for these CPUs is still pretty high due to a very well-developed infrastructure. In fact, contemporary Athlon XP processors on Barton core remain among the best solutions for the mainstream and value systems from the price-to-performance point of view. This way, Socket A shouldn’t be disregarded even despite the fact that we keep putting up more and more articles devoted to the fresh new Socket754 products.

The chipset and mainboard manufacturers seem to be guided by the same conclusions as we are. They not only continue manufacturing their old solutions for Socket A systems, but they still announce new solutions for the same platform. Today we are going to pay special attention to two new products of the kind: the new VIA KT880 chipset with a dual-channel memory controller and a new ASUS A7V880 mainboard based on this chipset.

So, as you may have already understood, VIA KT880, which the company promised to release about half a year ago, has finally reached the mass production stage. This is the first (and the last) Socket A chipset from VIA featuring a dual-channel memory controller. The final arrival of the VIA KT880 seems to be putting a full stop in the constant rivalry between VIA and NVIDIA in the Socket A chipset field. Until now VIA didn’t have a chipset as fast as NVIDIA nForce2, although the company did undertake numerous attempts to do it. However, all the company’s previous chipsets, which were intended to compete with NVIDIA nForce2 (and there were three of them: KT400, KT400A and KT600) featured a single-channel memory controller. Keeping in mind that the FSB bus between the CPU and the chipset features limited bandwidth, VIA assumed that Athlon XP based systems will hardly require two 64bit memory channels. Therefore, the company hasn’t yet had a chipset running as fast as nForce2 with its dual-channel memory architecture. That is why now VIA decided to try its luck by introducing a dual-channel memory controller, especially since the controller itself has already been developed for the Pentium 4 PT880 chipset. This way, having combined the memory controller from the PT880 chipset with the Socket A KT600, VIA got a new product called KT880, which on the one hand, looked more advanced than nForce2 from the formal characteristics point of view, and on the other hand, could work not any slower than its major rival due to the new dual-channel memory architecture. Let’s see what kind of chipset VIA got in the long run.