News Via Technologies outline their 2005 plans to bit-tech in London

Via have announced 3 new chipsets today, in their bid to win a share of the Intel PCI Express market, and they were showing us their technology down in London this morning.

The platforms are named the PT880 Pro, the PT894 and the PT894 Pro.

Of most interest is the enthusiast-targeted PT880 Pro, which is meant to ease the migration of upgraders to next generation components. The chipset supports simultaneous AGP and PCI-Express graphics cards, allowing for large multi-monitor setups. The chipset also supports both DDR1 and DDR2 memory, making upgrading a cinch.

All the chipsets support 1066MHz FSB Intel chips, which currently is just the latest Extreme Edition chip. Via's Drivestation technology supports Serial ATA v2, and allows for external SATA drives and channel multiplexing, meaning you can have up to 60 SATA devices on one channel.

Audio support includes options for a HD Audio Azalia solution, Via's own Vinyl codec or a top-spec Envy 24 codec.

Via have given us lots of interesting information about their plans for the coming year, although there's not much we can immediately tell you. We did see the latest iteration of the nano-ITX platform that their boffins have been developing, as well as an amazingly cool mini-ITX Media Centre PC from English partner Tranquil.

We took the opportunity to put a couple of questions to Via's President, Wenchi Chen. He told us that he believes Via's main advantage in the marketplace is their ability to think different. Citing the use of PC133 memory over RAMBUS on some of the older Pentium 4 platforms, he told us that "If we believe a different solution is better, we will go for it."

We also saw some very cool technology demonstrations from Via's partners engaging in mesh networking technology, as well as a new gaming service that Via will be launching on Thursday - more then.

Interesting, Via were keen to focus on the low-power aspect of their chipsets as a unique standpoint amongst IT companies. Whilst other chip makers are seeing power requirements go through the roof, Wenchi told us that he saw conservation of the planet's energy resources as a crucial priority when considering computing design that would soon explode into emerging markets like China.

We will have comprehensive coverage of the new chipsets just as soon as we have boards in our hands, as well as a first look at the Tranquil Media Centre PC. The Tranquil has an awesome chassis that we're just dying to take apart.

 

Will we actually see them though? Ive yet to see a market saturation of their latest chipsets at the range the K8T800pro has seen.

 

60 sata drives on one channel?



bloimey.

 

Yeah, can someone help me here? I can't figure out how, multiplexed, you can get 60 drives. 64, maybe. But why 60?

 

pftttt 2 sata ports is gonna be overkill .

Death