PCI Express for the Athlon64? No problem with HT bridge

AS VIA'S KT600 goes into mass production this month and supports the 400MHz front side bus that the AMD AthlonXP 3200+ does, we'd say it's even more likely that little Mr Barton has some way to go before he enters the realm of desuetude. That's pretty clear from some recent Via roadmaps we glimpsed that show the KM400A, Via's integrated Unichrome GFX processor, will also support the 400MHz bus and will go into mass production in the third quarter – not a long way away.

And the fate of the Athlon64 and the Opteron are also closely tied together, seeing as for the first time on a Via roadmap we noticed that its K8T800 and K8M800 are both labelled Athlon64 and Opteron. The more interesting chipset Via is preparing for the AMD 64-bit-joined-at-the-hip-Hammerish-processor is the K8T890, however, which samples towards the end of this year and supports PCI Express, indicating that it's not too hard to tie a hyperthreading bridge to the 2004 bus-to-end-all-buses.

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