Thoughts
VIA's first stab at a dual-channel S478 chipset appears to be a success. That wasn't too difficult to forsee, however. The VT8237 Southbridge is a consummate performer, and it has a lot going for it. On-chip SATA that's capable of servicing 4 drives (assuming a physical layer is incorporated into the design) and has an excellent Windows-based GUI to monitor and construct RAID formations is an obvious highlight. 8 USB2.0 ports don't harm the cause either. Then there's the possibility of adding in the excellent Envy24 sound chip, Gigabit LAN and FireWire support, all from VIA's own stable.All VIA had to do (all, he says) was to ensure that it could engineer and implement a sound North Bridge that accepted dual-channel memory support. The reference PT880 showed no instability or erroneous behaviour through a weekend of testing. There's two words that sum up what we think of it "it works", nothing more, nothing less. The resulting benchmarks put it above a standard Springdale and SiS655FX board and just below a well-tuned Canterwood. That will be good enough for most potential buyers.
What we'd like to see is a number of major motherboard manufacturers adopt the PT880 into their respective lineups. VIA has two problems that we can currently forsee. Firstly, the i865 derivatives and i875P have been ploughing their trade for 6 months now. They have market exposure and a brand name that's hard to beat. Further, motherboard engineers have found ways of extracting Canterwood-like performance from the ordinary Springdale chipset. Indeed, we've seen a number of big-name Springdales beat out the Canterwood chipset. That in itself gives VIA a headache. One can purchase a PAT-enabled i865PE with most of the features trimmings for less than £100 inclusive. VIA needs its partners to market the board at an even more attractive price point, we feel. A fully loaded PT880 at around £80 - £85 would make us and most people re-evaluate their purchasing decisions.
VIA has come into the dual-channel game a little late for it to make a major impact immediately. It needs to ensure that partners utilise the best parts of the chipset and price it aggressively. It'll then be considered a real contender to Intel's crown. We can see that system integrators may want to get in on the cheap(ish) dual-channel act. VIA may just have provided the means to do so. We'll examine just how well partners have lived up to the promise shown by the reference board in a look at retail examples shortly. Until then, the VIA PT880 rivals the best from Intel - and that's quite a compliment in itself.
