VIA has today announced its first chipset with support for two PCIe graphics cards. With S3's Chrome20 graphics cards on their way, it was about time big brother VIA launched a chipset supporting dual graphics, to make use of the multi-GPU MultiChrome technology that will come with the Chrome 20 series.
K8T900, which is designed for AMD Athlon 64 processors, is currently sampling to motherboard manufacturers. And it's rather heavy on the PCIe connectivity. It has provision for a single 16x link, or two 8x links for dual graphics cards, with up to six more PCIe links to play with too. This is part of VIA's crossfire RapidFire PCIe enhancement technologies. Four SATA 3.0Gbps drives can be hooked up to the K8T900, and the chipset also features VIA's Vinyl HD audio.
Connectivity aside, let's hear more about dual graphics, shall we? Much like most SLI implementations, dual Chrome27 graphics cards will have 8 lanes of PCIe bandwidth to play with each. Interestingly, there are reports that the chipset should also support CrossFire and SLI at some point (The Register have learned as much, anyway.)
The chipset won't be available in volume until around Q1 2006, so that gives us an idea of when to expect MultiChrome too. VIA and S3 together seem to be going after the upper segment of the consumer market, a place where competition is already fierce. Let's see if we can have a third competitor up there, shall we?
Finally, it was interesting to read in VIA's press release that K8T900 is pin-for-pin compatible for K8T890 platforms, which should make the transition to the chipset easy for motherboard manufacturers already using K8T890 and wanting to keep development costs down.
HEXUS.links
HEXUS.pr :: VIA's press release.
VIA.com.tw :: K8T900 product page.
