VIA Technologies today announced availability of the VIA K8M800 chipset, a core-logic for AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron processors with integrated graphics core. VIA is the second company to bring a chipset for cost-effective systems based on AMD64 CPUs on the market.

The K8M800 is a version of K8T800-series with UniChrome Pro graphics core with 128-bit 2D/3D engine, 2 pixel pipeline with 200MHz speed as well as MPEG-2 hardware acceleration. The novelty from VIA sports 800MHz HyperTransport bus to work with AMD64 microprocessors and V-Link to connect the VT8237 I/O hub providing PCI, USB, Parallel ATA, Serial ATA-150 controllers. Additionally, mainboards based on VIA K8M800 may be equipped with VIA’s impressive 5.1 or 7.1 audio solutions as well as VIA’s Gigabit Ethernet chips.

VIA’s K8M800 is not the first chipset for AMD’s 64-bit central processing units to be announced. Earlier this year Silicon Integrated Systems unveiled its SiS760 core-logic with its own graphics core. Both chipsets are more intended for low-cost rather than for entertainment systems, therefore, do not expect VIA’s UniChrome Pro graphics or SiS’ Ultra256E graphics to be really fast in modern 3D games.  

The world’s leading graphics companies, namely ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corporation, are projected to bring their AMD64 chipsets with integrated graphics only in Q2 or Q3 next year.

A number of mainboard makers and ODMs have announced their support for the VIA K8M800 chipset. Current design wins for the K8M800 chipset include those from ASUS, Biostar, Chaintech, ECS, FIC, Gigabyte, Jetway, Mitac, MSI, Shuttle and Wistron. The VIA K8M800 is available now, with customer mainboards expected to ship in early Q1 2004.