KT400, nForce2 and Concluding Day 2
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
The VIA KT400 launch occurred immediately after the Carmack speech. If you read the article I wrote up this morning on the KT400 chipset almost all of the information that was provided today can be found there. Only a couple of smaller points need to be added here.First, VIA stated that by the 4Q of this year, they will have Serial ATA built into the south bridge of the KT400 chipsets. As motherboard manufacturers that have wanted to include Serial ATA in designs thus far have had to use external chipsets to do so, VIA would like to close this gap for them by offering it on-board. Also, but 1Q of the 2003, VIA will be integrating a wireless LAN connection into their latest south bridge.
By the benchmarks they are showing, the KT400 chipset is only showing a 5% increase or so over the previous KT333 chipset in Quake III. However, once the speed of AGP 8x is actually required, the KT400 should be able to outperform the KT333 much more easily. However, there is little out that there that supports AGP 8x, let alone pushes it.
Also, we learned from VIA that if AMD does bring out a 333 MHz processor part, that the KT333 and KT400 chipset are already supporting it and all most motherboard manufacturers would have to do is offer a BIOS update, if anything at all for it. Finally, VIA says that you can expect their Hammer solution to be the very first to market later this year.
nForce2
Remember the Shuttle mini barebones system we showed in our NVIDIA nForce2 Preview? Well, it turns out that Shuttle is at Quakecon and they happen to have a couple of these babies with them. They wouldn’t let me take it home and I didn’t bring the processors to test them with, so we are just going to have to wait to see what we can pull out of the system. I was able to snag some pictures of it though. Notice the AGP slot in it!
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Ending Day 2
Well, that wraps up what I have here from Quakecon 2002 on Day 2. I hope you enjoyed it, and I’ll see what I can get for you reading pleasure tomorrow. For now, it’s definitely time for bed. 🙂
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