First Look: VIA K8T900

Initial Thoughts...

The chipset appears to be a very competitive one from VIA. At least, in terms of performance. The K8T900 reference board managed to match the popular DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR across our selection of real-world and gaming scenarios. The platform appears to work well, too, which is good to see from a reference motherboard.

The VT8251 South Bridge works well too. The inclusion of a SATA II controller with Native Command Queuing, hot swapping, and the impressive selection of RAID options is also welcome. However, it seems strange for VIA to choose a 10/100 Ethernet controller over the industry-standard Gigabit Ethernet speeds that are somewhat expected on an enthusiasts motherboard.

Having said that, there is nothing stopping VIA's motherboard partners from implementing a PCI-Express based Gigabit Ethernet controller from the likes of Marvell or Broadcom, as we have seen on VIA's reference motherboard with the Marvell 88E8053-NNC Gigabit Ethernet controller. In fact, we feel that many of the motherboard manufacturers will see the 10/100 Ethernet controller as a positive point, as it will reduce the costs of the chipset. Thus, allowing partners to add some more innovative features into their motherboard designs.

I guess that most of you are wondering whether this motherboard will run two GeForce 7-series video cards in SLI mode? Like so:

Unfortunately, it didn't work. We can't see it working any time soon either; at least, with official drivers. Last month, we reported that a Russian enthusiast managed to get SLI working on the ASUS P5WD2 Premium motherboard, based on Intel's 955X chipset. We believe this will be possible on VIA's new K8T900 chipset too, providing you use the right drivers. However, there are no drivers that support GeForce 7-series as well as allowing SLI to function on chipsets that aren't certified on NVIDIA's SLI certification program.

On the flip side, we believe that ATI's CrossFire technology should work, as it isn't locked down quite so heavily in the Catalyst drivers. We look forwards to testing the new S27 Chrome video card in both single and MultiChrome modes in conjunction with a retail K8T900-based motherboard in the future. It will be interesting to see whether S3 Graphics can hit the nail on the head with its drivers this time round. We are expecting S3 Graphics to start shipping S27 Chrome to Europe in Q1 2006.

There is no doubting that nForce 4 is a very mature product, and SLI is a sought-after brand name that both manufacturers and enthusiasts appear to be craving for at the moment. However, VIA appears to have a very competitive chipset in its hands with the K8T900/VT8251 combination. Retail availability isn't going to happen until the first quarter of 2006, so this is a launch of the paper variety.

However, we look forward to seeing what VIA's partners come up with when retail boards are in mass production and shipping to online vendors. If K8T900-based boards turn out to be cheaper than their nF4 equivalents, and if VIA can support NVIDIA SLI and / or ATI Crossfire at the driver level, they could be onto a winner.