CES 2005: Chipsets, Motherboards, and Memory

VIA K8T890

The VIA K8T890 is another chipset that has taken the long way to market. VIA was finally showing some production boards based on their new PCI Express chipset. Albatron and Asus are apparently ready to launch K8T890 boards in the very near future.

VIA "SLI"

VIA was also demonstrating a working machine with their version of dual video cards. The VIA solution is a bit different in that there is no bridge chip, slot 2 is x4, and any two video cards can be combined. VIA had combined an ATI X800 XT and an X300 in their dual graphics machine, but we did not have an opportunity to see benchmarks of the video performance.

Abit

Abit has long had close ties to VIA, and Abit was also touting their new AX8 board.

The AX8 is based on the PCIe K8T890 with the VT8237 south bridge. AX8 has the expected x16 PCIe slot for video, 3 x1 PCIe, and two legacy PCI slots. Features include SATA Raid, Gigabit LAN, and Firewire. The boards have shown up for pre-order at a few websites at some very reasonable prices for a PCIe dual-channel Socket 939 motherboard - about $120 for the regular AX8 version and around $150 for the 3^rd-eye version with the system info LCD panel.

ASUS

ASUS will also launch their K8T890 solution in the form of the AV8-E Deluxe. Merchants are starting their pre-order sales now, and we are told that you can pick up the board from a few select merchants if you know where to look.