Neowin.net

VIA HAS LET SLIP a new Athlon chipset today in the guise of the Apollo KT400A Chipset. The Taiwanese chip firm reckons the 7th Generation Apollo KT400A is the fastest single channel DDR chipset for the AMD's Athlon XP 3000+ processor. That, it says is because of its FastStream64 Memory Controller technology which, it says, "uses an expanded array of prefetch buffers to reduce latency in the memory controller, extending performance without the extra cost of the twin memory modules that are required by dual channel DDR chipsets. "

VIA also claims that the Apollo KT400A is over 10 per cent faster than the previous generation VIA Apollo KT400 in 3D applications, something that initial reviews seeping onto the Interweb today suggest may be true. The chipset also boasts native Serial ATA support and onboard VIA Vinyl Audio six-channel surround sound.

The company says the Apollo KT400A supports DDR200/266/333/400 SDRAM memory and a full range of 200/266/333MHz processor bus Athlon XP and Duron processors. The chipset is part of VIA's Modular Architecture Platform initiative (V-MAP), meaning both North and South Bridge are pin compatible with the previous generation KT400 Chipset, ensuring, VIA believes, a much faster time to market and a broad range of reliable motherboards for OEMs, system builders and end users.

News source: The Inq

DDR400 offers 3.2GB/s of memory bandwidth through VIA's smart FastStream64 memory controller while AGP 8X delivers 2.1GB/s of bandwidth to the graphics engine. The KT400A North Bridge is connected to a VT8237 or VT8235CE South Bridge through the fast 8X V-link connection at 533MB/s.

VIA wheeled out AMD spokesman, Tim Wright, director of desktop marketing, to trumpet the launch. Wright seized the opportunity, stating: "VIA chipsets offer AMD customers compatible memory modules and enhanced features such as 8XAGP- enhanced graphics and bandwidth throughput of USB 2.0." he reckons, support for DDR-400 memory by VIA is great for AMD customers.