News Release
VIA Announces K8T890, World’s First PCI Express Chipset
for the AMD Athlon™ Processor
VIA K8T890 Series chipsets open up the AMD64 processor
platform to PCI Express, providing the bandwidth needed
for today’s most demanding applications and the headroom
needed for future growth
Taipei, Taiwan, 24 September 2004, - VIA Technologies,
Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip
technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced
the VIA K8T890 chipset, enabling advanced PCI Express
connectivity on motherboards for the latest AMD Athlon™
64, AMD Opteron™, and AMD Sempron™ processors.
The VIA K8T890 chipset is designed to fully accommodate
the increased multimedia demands being placed on the
PC through applications such as high definition video
creation, multistreaming audio and the latest 3D game
engines that require ever-increasing levels of system
bandwidth. Featuring the unique VIA Flex Express Architecture,
the VIA K8T890 chipset provides support for the latest
high performance PCI Express x16 graphics cards, benefiting
from a blistering 4GB/s of bandwidth, both upstream
and downstream.
The K8T890 chipset also supports up to four PCI Express
x1 connections, each offering 250MB/s bandwidth per
direction to a wide range of high bandwidth peripheral
devices – approximately double the maximum theoretical
bandwidth provided by existing PCI 2.2 peripheral connections.
Among the peripheral devices most likely to benefit
from the increased bandwidth will be Gigabit Ethernet
connections and bandwidth hungry HDTV tuner cards, which
will be able to perform to their full potential without
the constraints of limited bus bandwidth.
“With the arrival of the VIA K8T890 Series chipsets,
VIA continues its strong leadership on the AMD platform,
delivering the features, performance, and stability
that our customers have come to expect,” commented Wenchi
Chen, CEO VIA Technologies Inc. “By enabling PCI Express
we believe that all the pieces are in place on the AMD64
processor platform, meaning all users can now upgrade
to a 64-bit AMD processor, safe in the knowledge they
have a future proof platform.”
“As one of our premier partners, we are very pleased
to see VIA bring PCI Express support to the AMD64 platform,”
commented Marty Seyer, corporate vice president and
general manager of AMD’s Microprocessor Business Unit.
“Combining the phenomenal bandwidth of PCI Express connectivity
with HyperTransport™ technology as well as the latest
high-performance graphics cards and peripheral devices,
customers can continue to unleash the full performance
potential of AMD64 technology.”
About VIA Flex Express Architecture
The VIA
Flex Express Architecture has been designed to allow
flexible implementations of VIA core-logic chipsets
supporting PCI Express. Multiple device configurations
can be implemented, with support for up to five PCI
Express devices directly into the chipset North Bridge
and a total of 20 PCI Express lanes for a combined bandwidth
of 5GB/s.
With today’s PC users increasingly using multiple HDDs,
optical drives and USB/1394 devices, heavier data loads
are being placed on the chipset’s South Bridge, the
ability to avoid bottlenecks between the chipset’s North
and South Bridge is crucial to maintaining a consistent
level of system performance. The VIA Flex Express architecture
meets this challenge by providing PCI Express x1 connections
directly routed through the chipset’s North Bridge,
thereby avoiding potential data bottlenecks in the chipset’s
North to South Bridge link and reducing latency.
About the VIA K8T890 Chipset
Designed to support a complete range of AMD Athlon 64,
AMD Athlon 64 FX and AMD Opteron as well as 754- and
939-pin versions of AMD Sempron processors, the VIA
K8T890 delivers high performance, comprehensive features,
and rock solid stability. The K8T890 chipset includes
support for the latest PCI Express x16 graphics cards,
and four PCI Express x1 connections to high speed PCI
Express peripherals.
The VIA K8T890 chipset also features asynchronous bus
architecture, providing improved system optimization
options to enable power users to squeeze the very most
out of their systems.
With a high bandwidth Ultra V-link bus, the K8T890
allows communication between the North and South bridges
at a blazing 1GB/s, reducing the likelihood in any I/O
bandwidth bottlenecks. When combined with the market-leading
VIA VT8237R South Bridge and a broad array of VIA companion
chips, the VIA K8T890 chipset provides the most comprehensive
range of storage, multimedia and connectivity features
available for the AMD64 processor platform today, including
native Serial ATA and V-RAID, 6-channel or 8-channel
VIA Vinyl audio, USB2.0, and 1394.
The VIA K8T890 is part of VIA's acclaimed Modular Architecture
Platform (V-MAP), which minimizes design times and time-to-market
for motherboard partners through a flexible, pin-compatible
design approach for VIA core-logic solutions. Motherboard
partners are able to cover multiple market segments
with fewer design resources, and also benefit from a
single unified driver base.
For further information about the VIA K8T890 chipset
please visit the VIA website at:
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/k8-series/k8t890/
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