Thread: VIA PT880 Pro for Intel Pentium4 processors

VIA PT880 Pro chipset for Intel Pentium4 processors
Some time ago the company VIA experienced difficulties in the strongest sales chipsets. In particular, the platform for AMD Socket A whole line of chipsets KTxxx ceded its characteristics nVidia products. After exit Athlon64 processors situation improved somewhat, but only slightly: Experienced users still preferred the maternal Boards at nVidia nForce chipsets. But AMD chipset market in scope far below market chipsets for Intel processors. And here at VIA were still great difficulties - at the same time the company did not have a licence for Pentium4 processor tyre and was forced to issue and sell chipsets clandestinely. In response, Intel has introduced some sanctions, and business chipsetny VIA became klonitsya to sunset.

But in the past year the situation has changed. Was received long-awaited license Intel, and VIA chipset submitted two: PT880 Pro and PT894 Pro. Today, we look at an engineering sample board PT880 Pro chipset.

Immediately, we note that in itself fee came out to be extremely raw, and the transfer of all "глюков" and disadvantages would take an entire page. However, after lengthy experiment, we have found a stable configuration and filmed testimony productivity. In addition, weaknesses test motherboard should not disturb end users. The fact is that leading producers would not make payment on the chipset frankly bad, even if it is historically cheap.

So, chipsets VIA PT880 Pro is designed for middle-end motherboards for the Intel Pentium4 processors. But his closest competitor is the i915P, so in this review we will constantly compare the two products.

Potentially chipsets VIA PT880 Pro looks very interesting. First, the memory controller supports both DDR2 (400/533) and DDR1 (266/333/400). On this parameter is not inferior chipset Intel 915P, but in other areas PT880 Pro surpasses its competitor. In particular, in the northern bridge is implemented "native" as support for PCI Express, and the AGP.

Recall that the transition to stimulate users tyre PCI Express, in the latest Intel chipsets excluded AGP support. As a result, many users who have powerful (expensive) AGP video card, faced difficulties in the transition to the new platform LGA775. In fact, some companies immediately announced that they were able to implement AGP i915P. But the full realization of it was not: indeed on the motherboard attended AGP slot, but he worked through the usual tyre PCI. The result - a rather serious decline in productivity in 3D applications (example - Review Boards Albatron PX915P-AGPe).

So - at the motherboard chipset from VIA PT880 Pro falling productivity with AGP video card should not. First, it allows users to configure their relatively flexible system. And secondly VIA engineers realized the technology interesting: for cards with the chipset PT880 Pro allowed simultaneous operation as AGP, and PCI Express graphics card. This technology has been named DualGFX. But note that nothing revolutionary it is: the user has no opportunity to combine computing resources of both cards (like nVidia SLI), and the only usefulness is its ability to connect four monitor. But in any case, we note that in the area of graphics cards supporting chipsets PT880 Pro surpasses i915P.

By the way, according to some information, graphics card on the PCI Express slot, employs only 4 lines for PCI Express (rather than 16 as at all other chipsets). However, in practice, the user does not notice any difference, since 4 lines and more than enough for modern graphics cards.

With regard to the capacity expansion, the motherboard is installed on the test VT8237 south bridge, which was far below its characteristics ICH6 (R). In particular, the VT8237 supports only 2 SerialATA channel (at the ICH6 - 4), 100 Mbitnoe network connection (at the ICH6 - Gigabit). Equality between the southern bridges are in support USB2.0 (8 ports) and support 8 - channel sound. And the only advantage VT8237 is the availability of two channels ParallelATA against one of the ICH6. Moreover, we note that Intel deliberately chose to reduce ParallelATA channels from 2 to 1 to force the user to move the device SerialATA.



But the main drawback of southern bridge VT8237 is the lack of support for PCI Express cards for expansion. For example, for cards with ICH6 users have the 2-3 slot PCI Express x1, and on some models on single channel PCI Express x1 "hanging" Gigabit network controller (such a scheme is very real increases the data transfer speed). The company understands the weakness VIA VT8237, and is preparing to release a new south bridge - VT8251. It will be implemented, and 4 channels SerialATA, and Gigabit Ethernet Controller, and most importantly - support two lines for PCI Express (that is, the fee may appear two-slot PCI Express x1).

And, after an VT8251 chip manufacturers can begin production of motherboards to bundle PT880 Pro + VT8251. The fact is that chipsets from VIA north and south bridge linked via a tyre Ultra V-Link, which allows different combinations of the north and south bridge (take for example the chipsets for AMD - we met VT8237 south bridge as a fee for the Athlon64, and at the Boards for the Athlon SocketA).