VIA Technologies announced its probably the last and final Socket A core-logic ever, the KT400A. The Taipei, Taiwan-based chipset designer claims that its newcomer is the fastest single-channel solution for AMD Athlon XP processors that also supports the latest and exciting I/O and audio features.

As our regular readers probably learnt from our previous reports, the main feature of VIA KT400A is the so-called FastStream64 memory controller technology which uses an expanded array of prefetch buffers to reduce latency in the memory controller. Thanks to this and possibly other improvements, VIA states that the KT400A is over 10% faster than the previous generation VIA KT400 in 3D applications.
 
With KT400A, VIA offers mainboard partners to use a pair of different I/O controllers: VT8235CE or VT8237. The former is just the same VT8235 as now used on KT400-based mainboards, but pin-to-pin compatible with VT8237, while the latter provides a couple of pretty important innovations, such as, 4 Serial ATA-150 ports, 8 USB 2.0 ports and also VIA Vinyl Audio technology with 6-channel surround sound (when 6-channel codec is used, of course) and Sensaura drivers for high quality and realistic audio in different environments. VT8235CE is supposed to be cheaper than the VT8237, hence, those mainboard manufacturers, who do not really want to install a more expensive controller, will have an alternate solution.
 

Here are the official specifications of VIA KT400A North Bridge:

• Supports all Socket A Athlon XP/Athlon/Duron processors with 200, 266 and 333MHz EV-6 system bus;
• VIA KT400A North Bridge can be accompanied by VT8235 or VT8237 I/O Controller;
• 8x V-Link architecture to connect North and South Bridges;
• Up to 4GB of PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 (DDR400) DDR SDRAM;
• AGP 8x slot.

Take a look at the key-specifications of VIA VT8237 South Bridge:

• 6 PCI slots;
• 8 USB 2.0 ports;
• 2-channel integrated ATA-33/66/100/133 controller;
• 4 Serial ATA-150 ports;
• VIA Ethernet MAC;
• 6-channel audio-solution;
• MC97 Modem;
• LPC;
• Ultra V-Link (only 8x V-Link is used on VIA KT400A);
• Pin-to-pin compatible with VT8235CE.

Even according to VIA's bencmarks, the KT400A cannot offer us considerably higher speed compared to dual-channel NVIDIA's nForce2 in certain cases and probably is slower in those applications and benchmarks, where memory bandwidth and performance is stressed heavily. The one indisputable advantage of VIA KT400A chipset is definitely its lower price compared to NVIDIA's nForce2. Given that VIA probably still has the largest share of Socket A platforms market, I think that the KT400A has all chances to find itself a niche on the market. Will it find it? Only time will tell.