VIA Technologies representatives recently elaborated on highly-anticipated VIA PT890 chipset schedule. The company is very aggressive in terms of time-to-market and is likely to start volume commercial shipments of the chipset boasting with the next-generation technologies already this quarter.

“Our first chipset to support PCI Express and DDR-II is the PT890, which is slated for launch by Q1 2004. Like the existing PT880 chipset, the PT890 will feature an asynchronous clock, allowing users to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the forthcoming Intel Prescott processors,” said Ben Boyden, marketing manager for the VIA Chipsets platform in an interview to X-bit labs. 

“The KT890 chipset [with PCI Express support] for the AMD64 platform will follow shortly after the PT890,” Boyden added.

In case VIA manages to outstrip Intel Corporation, Silicon Integrated Systems and some other competitors, such as NVIDIA Corporation, with the introduction of a totally new core-logic products featuring the headline technologies for the year 2004, the Taiwanese chipset designer will have huge marketing advantage and may get additional chances in capturing larger market share.

Actual availability of mainboards designed to work with DDR-II SDRAM and PCI Express will catalyze memory makers and add-in cards producers to roll-out their new generation of computer components. The only thing the hardware companies will have to explain about the cutting-edge technologies is whether they really bring advantages or not. As a recent poll at X-bit labs shows, the year 2003 generated a lot of skepticism about technologies. Will the customers believe in the new tech now?