VIA K8T series
The VIA K8T series (VIA K8Txxx (Pro)) from VIA Technologies is a family of chipsets for PC motherboards . These chipsets are suitable for processors from Advanced Micro Devices with HyperTransport interface ( AMD K8 ).
Naming
The K8T series stands in the tradition of the VIA KT series and continues these chipsets for a new processor platform. For the first time, these chipsets do not have the "A" suffix, which previously always denoted a slightly improved version.
technology
Since the memory controller of the AMD K8 processors is integrated directly in the processor and one of the main functions of the Northbridge is omitted, the Northbridge of the VIA K8T series is basically nothing but a combination of HyperTransport-to-AGP-Bridge or HyperTransport-to- PCIe bridge and HyperTransport-to-VLink bridge.
Southbridges
K8Txxx (Pro) is just the marketing name for the northbridge of the chipset. Since all VIA Southbridges from VT8231 can be combined with all VIA Northbridges from KT266 or P4X266 using V-Link , it is not possible to determine exactly which Northbridge is combined with which Southbridge . However, the K8T chipsets mainly use VT8237 / VT8237R + or VT8237A. A few motherboards have VT8251. The reason for this lies in the long delay of the VT8251.
Models
K8T800
The K8T800 was the first VIA chipset for the HyperTransport protocol of the AMD K8 . Since VIA was the first manufacturer to offer a full implementation of the HyperTransport protocol and was also on the market in good time, the K8T800 was a great success and can be found on the majority of all motherboards for socket 754 .
K8T800 Pro
As an improved version of the K8T800, the K8T800 Pro features the HyperTransport interface accelerated to 1000 MHz, which makes it fully suitable for the Socket 939 . In addition, AGP and PCI are decoupled from the reference clock .
K8T890
With the widespread introduction of PCI-Express , a new chipset from VIA came onto the market with the K8T890 . The K8T890 had the big problem, however, that the Southbridge VT8251 that was actually planned for it was not finished in time. Compared to the NVIDIA nForce4, it has major disadvantages in terms of equipment. Large advertising efforts by NVIDIA , especially in connection with SLI , which NVIDIA refuses to use on chipsets other than their own, meant that hardly any motherboards were developed with the VIA K8T890. A bug in the chip design that prevented the dual-core processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 from operating with the first revision of the K8T890 had an additional negative impact . However, the K8T800 Pro does not have this bug. Problems related to PCI-Express 2.0 also appeared later. Expansion cards were not recognized here. While an update of the graphics bios often helped with graphics cards, there was no solution for other expansion cards.
K8T900
The K8T900 is just a revised version of the K8T890 and offers the option of implementing two PEG slots with eight PCIe lanes each. In theory, it would also be possible to interconnect several graphics cards with the K8T900. In practice, however, this is not possible, since both ATI Technologies (or now Advanced Micro Devices ) and NVIDIA only allow their multi-GPU technologies on their own chipsets. Thus only MultiChrome from S3 Graphics works with the K8T900, which also shows the insignificance of this new possibility of the K8T900. For these reasons, the K8T900 has not yet been installed on any motherboard. However, it is assumed that the new revisions of the K8T890 are identical to the K8T900, but that only one PEG slot is used.
Model overview
| Equipment feature | K8T800 | K8T800 Pro | K8T890 | K8T900 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northbridge name: | ||||
| HyperTransport: | 800 MHz | 1,000 MHz | 1,000 MHz | 1,000 MHz |
| PCI-Express lanes: | - | - | 20th | 20th |
| PCI-Express links: | - | - | 5 | 6th |
| AGP compatibility: | 3.0 (4 ×, 8 ×) | 3.0 (4 ×, 8 ×) | - | - |
| Southbridge connection: | 8 × V-Link | Ultra V-Link | Ultra V-Link | Ultra V-Link |
See also
- NVIDIA nForce3
- NVIDIA nForce4
- NVIDIA nForce 500
- NVIDIA nForce 600
- Advanced Micro Devices
- Silicon Integrated Systems