VIA Q3 2004 Chipset Roadmap Updates

VIA South Bridges

Finally, we come to VIA's South Bridge offerings. Due to the proprietary V-Link interconnect, VIA's South Bridges can only be used with VIA's North Bridges and vice versa, but that is nothing new or unusual. Let's take a look at the options.

The VT8235 is a slightly older South Bridge, as you can see by its lack of support for SATA and RAID. It is still in use on many socket A and earlier P4 motherboards, though, as well as in embedded systems that use VIA's low-power, low-cost C3 processor. (We won't bother with the details on VIA's socket 370 of socket A chipsets as those have both been available for some time now.) These days, the VT8235 is a low-cost, no-frills South Bridge that goes into budget systems as well as embedded devices.

VIA's VT8237 South Bridge is the updated version of the VT8235 and it adds the "missing" support for up to 2 SATA devices and basic RAID. Depending on the North Bridge on the motherboard, the VT8237 can use the Ultra V-Link connection or the older 8X V-Link. Performance with RAID and Gigabit Ethernet may benefit slightly with the faster V-Link, although generally the 533 MB/s transfer rate of the 8X V-Link should be more than sufficient. Both the 8235 and 8237 can be paired with either a standard AC'97 codec or the enhanced 24-bit VIA Envy chip and codec. VIA Envy is a good quality audio solution that is used on several add-in cards, but unfortunately not many motherboard manufacturers are willing to include it as it increases costs slightly.

The third South Bridge VIA offers is their new VT8251. It is a substantial upgrade in features from the others, as it includes not only RAID and SATA support - this time with native support for 4 SATA drives - but it also adds in some other goodies. For starters, the SATA controller now supports Native Command Queuing. There are also two PCIe lanes, allowing either two X1 PCIe connections or one X2 PCIe connection. Here, the faster Ultra V-Link will definitely help out. On the audio side, the VT8251 adds support for 8 channel High Definition Audio (192 KHz/32-bit sampling). AC'97 audio is still supported as well, as is VIA's Envy 24-bit audio chip. Finally, the ACPI controller is 2.0 compliant, which allows for additional power saving features.

Closing Thoughts

In addition to all of their North and South Bridges, VIA also manufactures a wide variety of companion chips to add additional features to any motherboards. These chips can be used in boards both with and without VIA chipsets. There are no new additions to their companion chips, but just to provide a quick overview, the following technologies are covered. Networking in both 10/100 and GbE options, IEEE1394/Firewire, SATA, PATA, USB2.0, Audio, TV Out, and DVI connections. Chances are pretty good that if there is a technology that is used in computers, VIA makes a chip that supports it.

So, that's what VIA has in plan for the near future as far as chipsets go. We look forward to testing out products using these chips in the future, and we'll be sure to keep you posted on availability and performance. We should hopefully see some competition for Intel in the PCI Express chipset arena before the end of 2004, and competition is good.