What Happened to VIA ?

[MaxFactor1]

I was just talking to myself as usual and was thinking bout computers as usual... so you see women have it wrong... i think about computers half the time and them the other half... anyway... i just strolling down memory lane and remembered when they and intel had the chipset market all to themselves... sis to an extent...

When the K62 came out VIA had a whale of a time... and right up until the thunderbird... they basically had a monopoly on we AMD users... heck... from you bought an AMD chip VIA was guaranteed 9 out of 10 to make more money... they profited from us from boards like the K7T Turbo and KT3 Ultra and the KT4 Ultra (msi boards)...

By this time we had reached Athlon XP at about 2200+ and speeds were on the ramp... now out of silicon valley there is a company by the name nVidia who primarily made the cheaper video card as ATI was for the rich.... they decided to try ther hand at the chipset thing-a-ma-jig... and so the nForce 2was born... "it is pointless to resist"

Now this put a panic over by VIA as nForce not only debut as the best contender for AMD chips but as the #1 chipset... why.... the technology that makes us by memory in kits... yep... dual channel. Now with dual channel nForce immediately dispelled all VIA boards as no matter what VIA did they just could not beat dual channel. Even the good ol KT600 was no match...

So these two chipsets accompanied the final leg of the AMD socket 462 line... till death they were the ones... thanks alot.... but alas and a bitter sweet one too... VIA made another chipset by rev eng of course... the KT880... this chipset was the answer that saw me in my last rig... it was listed in my first sale on Tech Jamaica... it ran the 3200 like a champ and unlike the nForce 2 Ultra that could not use 4 double sided dimms... it brushed that aside easily.... so essentially 4GB was no problem for this board... but thats the end of the 462 era and we move on to the demise...

PS... that chipset (PT880) actually is still used for intel platforms since intel chips uses northbride to talk to memory.

We find ourselves in this story along Athlon 64 the first Book 1 Chapter 1... Socket 754... what a chip... and who made the first board... you guessed it... VIA... with the resilient K8T800... this made nVidia look like jack in the boxes as the competing chipset was a hunk a junk nForce 3 150... the hypertransport could only manage 600MHz... so VIA reigned for a while... with ther chip giving the full 800MHz from day 1....

nVidia wasted no time and struck back with the nForce 3 250 and that hit the spot... plenty USB and even amount of satas... VIA's best board had two native sata connects and two from promise along with the additional ide.... nForce paired with Gigabyte as usual and made the killer board with 2 native satas as well and two more from SIS as well as the infamous GIGARAID to give two more IDE... the race was now back on even terms....

Now this is the sad part and the end of this company with AMD...

nVidia immediately realised that they still had the market and wasted no time when they heard AMD was switching platform from 754 to 939... VIA was in the dust... and in comes the nForce 4 Ultra with 4 native satas and 4 more for the elite boards... 8 satas and many of us dont even have two... AM2 came out and nVidia was like the only chipset that was ever present on the planet... VIA tried to convince mobo makers that they still had flare and they should not be overlooked... they didn't.... they used them to make value boards that are guaranteed to work no more than a year... dwl

The last thing I heard was some new chipset that would have rocked but they seem to have become wind, swept away by the currents of time.

[Krems]

Via seems to be concentrating on the embedded/SFF market

[DJ_WOW]

I dont blame them, not like a future is there for them now in the desktop business. I say move on via, move on.

[MaxFactor1]

Via seems to be concentrating on the embedded/SFF market

fi real krems caw mi si some wicked micro combos that would prolly fit in a glove compartment...

[leoandru]

They have been busy doing stuff like this.

[Notorios]

Wow, very interesting and small, damn

[Krems]

fi real krems caw mi si some wicked micro combos that would prolly fit in a glove compartment...

they really do

check out mp3car.com...


them soon have problems in that department though...

1) thier C-series processors are underpowered
2)although they pride themselves in low voltage use, some Intel micro-combos have been found to use less..for cheaper, with like twice the performance.
3)AMD is coming up with its own SFF mb layout...DTX

[zRo ToLeRaNcE]

They have been busy doing stuff like this.

And others discussed here

[igodit]

They have been busy doing stuff like this.

A first look at VIA’s Pico-ITX motherboard. More…

[lovepython]

A first look at VIA’s Pico-ITX motherboard. More…

link leads to wrong article: "Apple Beats Microsoft at its Own Open XML Game"