Recently, I reviewed the Gigabyte K8VNXP employing the VIA K8T800 chipset. This was the first AMD Athlon64 supportive motherboard to appear on Legion Hardware. Since then I have been eager to test other boards based on the K8T800 chipset in particular. Already the K8T800 is a proven product for both the Opteron and Athlon64 processors. The performance of this chipset, with dual Opteron 244 processors utilizing two 940-pin Sockets on the MSI K8T Master-2-FAR, was remarkable. The results when using the K8T800 with a 754-pin Athlon64 processor were just as remarkable. The K8T800 has demonstrated that it is a highly flexible solution for AMDs entire range of 64-bit processors.

The K8T800 is one of those rare products that will succeed in just about every market segment, simply because this is what VIA have set out to achieve. Due to the fact that the K8T800 is a moderately priced chipset designed to support both AMDs mainstream and workstation processors, it is a hard product to classify. By this I mean it can be easily suited to a number of applications. For example, when using a 754-pin connector with the K8T800 chipset it essentially becomes a Desktop Performance Chipset, designed to offer the enthusiast the highest level of PC performance.

As a result of using the 754-pin connector, the K8T800 will support Athlon 64 processors with a 64-bit Single-Channel DDR memory controller that is integrated directly into the processor. However, the K8T800 is also a Server/Workstation chipset when coupled with a 940-pin connection. It will now support either single or dual Opteron processors, with a 128-bit Dual-Channel DDR memory controller that is also integrated directly into the processor.

Since the memory controller is now integrated into the processor there is less the chipset can offer performance wise. In the past chipsets such as the nFoce2 and KT600 have been alienated by their memory controllers. Therefore, I believe there will be very little variance in performance from one K8T800 board to another. Today Albatron have supplied their first Athlon64 supportive motherboard for review. The K8X800 Pro II will either support my beliefs by delivering the same performance as the Gigabyte K8VNXP or do something unexpected. For now we will have to wait and see as I move onto the boards features and layout...