Via takes Nvidia head on with DX9 future parts

JANUARY ROADMAPS seen by the INQUIRER show that Via is preparing an onslaught on the firm that it sees as its chief rival, Nvidia. The battle as, you'd expect, is being fought on several fronts and include the Athlon 64, sound and the good old IGP, again. The first onslaught is on the Intel front, however, with Via expecting to see its Pentium 4 chipsets using the PM800 to offer an upgradeable option at prices it hopes will ruffle Intel's tail feathers. Yet there still appear to be some difficulties with the Unichrome Pro.

On the AMD front, Via's KT800 will support the 8251, and PCI Express will loom into view. The 8239 will be a chip that takes second place to the 8251, we understand. And the KT880 chipset will also have 8251 support, meaning that while Socket A still lives, we'll see PCI Express in two lanes for such beasties. In Q3 this year, the Athlon FX gets a 754 pin retrofit.

Via is tampering with the names of its products. The Unichrome 2 graphics platform will change to the Unichrome Pro, while Unichrome 3 will turn into DeltaChrome IGP. So we'll see a P4M800 chipset offering DDR 400, AGP 8X and have a Unichrome graphics core.

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