VIA PT Series: VIA PCI Express for Intel
by Wesley Fink on January 31, 2005 12:01 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
VIA 8251 South Bridge
The new 8251 southbridge adds many new capabilities to the 894 chipset family.- 2 x PCI-Express
- Connects 2 single PCI Express devices
- VIA DriveStation
- 2 Integrated IDE interfaces for 4 ATA133 devices
- 4 SATA ports for 4 SATA HDDs
- SATA II
- Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)
- Command queue
- Support for Port Multiplier
- Integrated V-RAID
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 & JBOD
- Support for RAID 5
- 8 USB 2.0 ports
- Integrated VIA 10/100 Ethernet
- High Definition Audio
- 192k/24bit 8-channel audio
- AC97 96K/20-bit 8 channel audio
- Ultra V-Link
VIA Drive Station also fully supports a Port Multiplier.
The Port Multiplier allows multiple hard drives to be connected to a single SATA connection. VIA claims up to 60 hard drives can be supported with a Port Multiplier on the 8251 southbridge.
New Audio Options
VIA is justifiably proud of their VIA Vinyl audio technology. The Vinyl series covers a full range of audio solutions from simple on-board audio to the audio chips driving many of the most-admired audio cards currently on the market. The new 8251 can support a number of audio options from the simple AC '97 to the sophisticated Vinyl Gold onboard controller.- VIA Vinyl HD Audio
- VIA Vinyl AC'97 7.1 Support
- VIA Vinyl Gold Onboard Controller
- VIA Envy24PT + VIA Eight-TRAC + additional DAC
- 24/96 resolution digital outputs
- VIA Stylus Audio Driver
- Integrated QSound Technology
- Immerzio Gaming Support
- Audio Gaming Support
- Q3D
- DirectSound, DirectSound3D, A3D and I3DL2 advanced 3D positioning
- Support for 2-7.1 channel speaker systems
- QEM
- EAX and EAX2.0-compatible acoustic environment simulation for headphones and 2 to 7.1 channel speaker systems
- QXpander
- Mono to 3D and stereo to 3D stereo sound stage synthesis and enhancement for headphones and stereo speakers
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indianguy - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
I may be wrong about hard disk bottleneck but these north bridges wont make it big anyway . Nforce 5 for intel pentium 4 for is about to be released soon and it wont be a paper launch like this one. It will kick ass of all other pentium chipsets. See the case of KT890 and nforce 4. Via made so much noise about being first for AMD cpu , but never made it while nforce 4 is everywhere.At the same time , i should also say that these north bridges made great choice for people upgrading old computers like socket 478 , williamette and northwood . I still have one old pentium 3 with via cle 266 chipset in biostar motherboard, where Via gave a new lease of life to my old pentium 3. But apart from that i wont use or reccomend anyone buying Via.
Cygni - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
little to now = little to noCygni - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
I dont agree at all that hard disc performance is whats holding back PC performance. Maybe for read/write heavy apps... but for gaming and general use, HD is hardly the problem, imho. Users these days have gobs of RAM which keeps frequent disc access way down.And theres lots of evidence that HD's arent the bottleneck in gaming. Moving from an ATA 133 drive to a SATA 150 drive barely gives any boost at all. Even moving from ATA 100 to SATA 150 shows little boost at all. Same with using Raptors, little to now increase in FPS. Loading times? Yup. Install times? Deffinitly... but overall performance? I just cant agree.
indianguy - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
This is just a paper launch. Hard disc performance is the main bottleneck nowadays in PC performance. Anyone buying motherboard today without NCQ and sata 2 will be very foolish. Until the 8251 (or 8239) southbridge from via comes , these northbridges wont do any good. Better buy a nforce 4 with sata 2 and sata 2 capable drive from hitachi rather than waste money in these obsolete south bridges and ultra v interconnects from via. By the time 8251 south bridge is actually released by via , next gen of 945/955 chipsets with sata 2/ncq will actually be released by intel making these chipsets only sold by no name mothorboard makers who sell only on price not features . Via makes big noise with no actual performace or product availability . No wonder its running knee deep in losses all these years .Wesley Fink - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
#19 - We carried the overclocking as far as we could with the somewhat limited options available on the Reference board. The overclocking results are at the bottom of page 6.Googer - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
#18 we all know the odd are in favor of AMD winning that battle. 10-1.Azsen - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Have you tried to overclock these boards, see what they are capable of?Dualboy24 - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Well I hope this will help push the 775 boards into a reasonable price range with the support for AGP and PCI-E. This may increase the number of buyers for this platform... but right now I assume most enthusiasts are goinng AMD for the performance and the charts on the review do show why.Looking forward to the next big clash of the titans.... Dual Cores anyone?
Regs - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Wow would I love to see this for the AMD CPU's as well. It will dramatically help PCI-Express melt in to the market.Cygni - Monday, January 31, 2005 - link
Impressive stuff from VIA. Should do wonders for their marketshare in the P4 market, im thinking. VIA is already doing quite well in S939 with the K8T800Pro, but its going to lose some when NF4 hits in force.