VIA K8T800 PRO: PCI/AGP Lock and 1000 HyperTransport for Athlon 64

Final Words

After benchmarking the K8T800 PRO, all we can say is, "IT'S ABOUT TIME!" VIA has resisted adding AGP lock capabilities to their chipsets for a very long time, and it is a real pleasure finally to evaluate a VIA chipset without having to say, "It's fast, but..."

Our brief testing showed a working AGP lock on the K8T800 PRO chipset, but VIA and manufacturers do need to get more voltage to the chipset if the lock is to be truly useful. The other unanswered question is the ultimate overclockablity of the K8T800 PRO. It won't be enough just to have check-list features when we have already seen nVidia boards that can reach 300-347 FSB with lower multipliers. VIA also has a working PCI/AGP lock on the new PT880 chipset for Intel, but that chipset still suffers from mediocre overclocking abilities compared to Intel's 865/875 chipsets. Let's hope that VIA doesn't make the same mistake on their flagship K8T800 PRO chipset.

There is no doubt that these are turning into exciting times for Athlon 64 enthusiasts. The processors that we have seen recently have more headroom, 1000 HyperTransport allows much higher FSB overclocks to be reached, .09 process chips should arrive this year, and the unlocked multipliers (down on Athlon 64 and a complete unlock on FX) allow for the kind of memory tweaking that you just cannot do with fixed multipliers, as we see on Intel's Pentium 4 family.

Next month will see the long-awaited introduction of Socket 939, bringing Dual-Channel unbuffered memory to Athlon 64. While they are wearing other clothes right now, we have already seen the two major chipsets for that new socket. The nVidia nForce3-250 and the K8T800 PRO are both very competent chipsets with very comparable features. We really won't know how far either of these chips will go in the new socket until next month. For now, we have unanswered questions with both chipsets. VIA has performed better historically in the high-end Dual-Channel configuration. K8T800 PRO continues that history of performance, but there will have to be improvements in overclocking capabilities for VIA to win this round - at least based on what we are seeing in this Reference Board.

On the other hand, we have yet to see what nVidia will do with Dual-Channel, HyperTransport, and the nForce3-250Gb. The performance on Socket 754 is impressive with excellent overclocking capabilities on the better production boards, but nVidia is still apparently binning chips, since they are offering 800HT to Socket 754 and reserving 1000HT for the new 939 boards. VIA, on the other hand, is moving their entire chipset line to 1000HT, and their yields must be excellent, since pricing for the PRO is the same as the earlier K8T800.

These questions will all be answered soon enough, and we are really looking forward to digging deeper to find answers for you over the next few weeks.