- What the North Bridge and South Bridge Do
- Mobo Integration Madness
- What We Look for When Testing Motherboards
- How We Test Motherboards
- Careful Considerations for New Mobos
- Our Top Pentium 4 Chipsets: Intel's 875P and 865PE
- Also Solid: ATI's Radeon 9100 IGP
- Pentium 4 Chipset Pretenders
- Our P4 Mobo Recommendations
- The Back Story: Summer of Athlon XP
- Enter the 64-bit Chipset
- Why Hasn't Intel Integrated the Memory Controller?
- Looking to Overclock?
- Looking Ahead: Future Chipsets & Mobos
- VIA Makes Its Move
- Prepare for BTX
- New Sockets Forthcoming
VIA Makes Its Move
VIA will also try to outflank Intel by introducing its PT890 chipset, which offers DDR2 and PCI Express support, as early as Februarybefore Grantsdale hits the street. Both chipsets support DDR and DDR2 RAM. Later on this year, we expect Intel to roll out its Copper River chipset, which is cloaked in mystery.
Interestingly, VIA made a strong attempt during the first half of 2004 to reestablish itself as a power player. Just before this book went to press, VIA released two new chipsetsthe K8T800 for the Athlon 64 FX and the PT880 Neo for the Pentium 4expressly designed to compete in the high-end performance category. How did the company fare? Read our review of the Albatron K8X800 on page 48 to find out.