by Anton Shilov
03/11/2003 | 10:50 AM
Yesterday VIA Technologies announced its KT400A chipset and today this Taiwanese web-site disclosed the prices VIA charges for its latest Socket A the core-logic sets. As we supposed, VIA’s KT400A is a bit cheaper compared to NVIDIA’s nForce2 and its prospects on the market are more or less clear now. <%BANNER[article]%>
According to the report, VIA KT400+VT8235CE configuration costs $18. In comparison, NVIDIA asks $20 and $30 for its nForce2 SPP and nForce2 IGP core-logic with a basic I/O controller respectively. The difference between the prices of discrete chipsets is not so big, however, we should also consider the fact that nForce2 powered mainboards are more complex compared to VIA KT400/KT400A because of dual-channel memory configuration that probably require mainboard makers to pay more attention on the quality. As a result, the difference between the price of KT400A and nForce2 powered solutions can be from $2 to $6. It is not too much if we deal with one or two mainboards, but if we multiply $6 on 10 000 mainboards, that will be a lot of money, I believe. On the other hand, NVIDIA’s nForce2 offers us greater performance and functionality, then, why not pay some additional sum for those advantages?
VIA continues to remain one of the biggest suppliers of Socket A chipsets. Reportedly the company has been selling 1.8 million of chipsets monthly for the past few months.
VIA Technologies currently supplies KT266A, KT333 CF, KT400 and KT400A discrete core-logic products for the Socket A platforms. It is very likely that either KT400 or KT333 CF will be phased out shortly, as presently KT400A is priced at the same level as KT400.