VIA are an odd bunch for a number of reasons, though none of which I can explain. If you can remember back to the days when the VIA KT400A was the ultimate Socket A chipset, then you will know just how good VIA were. They were at the forefront of AMD technology, driving their processors to new heights. At the time almost all die hard AMD fans used a motherboard supporting some kind of VIA chipset. Then all of a sudden nothing, their command over the AMD platform was over and in that same instant, so was their “performance” image.

Who are VIA today, where are they and what are they doing? Over the past few years there has been the odd rare occasion where VIA invites me to look at one of their upcoming chipsets that is going to help them reclaim their performance image. So of course I go and investigate this new chipset and usually I find it is pretty much everything VIA say it is, for example fast and feature packed. Every time I walk away thinking wow, VIA might have a winner on their hands with that one, but of course what happens … nothing.

Weeks, even months later there is still no evidence of that impressive chipset I vaguely recall testing on a VIA reference motherboard. Then when motherboard makers finally release boards based on the chipset they refuse to send samples out! Anyway, back when I looked at the K8T900 Pro, which was featured on a 939-pin reference board, I was impressed at how well this chipset performed. Given this was almost a year ago now and the competition back then was a well established nForce4 series, the performance of the K8T900 Pro was impressive nonetheless.

So anyway, almost a year later and I have been unable to pick up a motherboard based on this chipset and there are no high-end examples available. That said, I have been keen lately to look at some affordable motherboard solutions for the Intel Core 2 Duo processor. After all, the existing Intel 975X and P965 motherboards are not exactly affordable, though they do offer exceptional performance with extensive feature sets. The cheapest P965 motherboards still cost around $150 US and although this is quite a good price tag given what they offer, there are cheaper alternatives.

Priced at around $70 US there are few motherboards featuring the VIA P4M890 chipset that are Core 2 compliant. One of these motherboards would be the ultra affordable P5VD2-MX, which sports the P4M890 north bridge along with the VT8237A south bridge. The obvious drawbacks to this affordable motherboard are the lack of features. The outdated south bridge looks rather pathetic in comparison to those offered by Intel and NVIDIA. The VT8237A supports just two Serial ATA ports while the P4M890 memory support is limited to DDR2-400/533. This alone cripples the VIA P4M890 quite severely, as the Core 2 Duo works much better with DDR2-667 memory.

The idea behind this article is to first learn just how much slower the VIA P4M890 chipset is compared to the brand new Intel P965 chipset, if at all. Already we know the P965 is far superior when it comes to features, and those that are after more than two Serial ATA ports for example, will be better off with the Intel chipset. However, those looking at purchasing the slowest available Core 2 Duo processor, being the E6300, that do not need all the bells and whistles featured on the more exotic motherboard, might value what the P4M890 has to offer. With that in mind let's take a look at how the P4M890 stacks up first.