VIA K8T890 vs. NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra: Features Comparison
Speaking about the VIA K8T890 chipset, we have to admit that it doesn抰 look that impressive against the background of the nForce4 solution. It is not only because of the less overwhelming features list, but also because of the chipset architecture itself. While NVIDIA nForce4 is a single-chip solution, VIA K8T890 is based on the classical dual-chip architecture. The VIA core logic set consists of the North and South Bridges connected with the company抯 brand-name V-Link bus with 1066MB/s data transfer rate.
However, despite this high data transfer rate, the use of additional connecting components between the two chipset components leads inevitably to tangible delays when the system CPU addresses peripheral controllers implemented in the chipset South Bridge.
The North Bridge of the VIA K8T890 chipset is responsible for HyperTransport and PCI Express bus support. HyperTransport bus serves to connect the chipset with the processor and can work at up to 1GHz frequency. It means that VIA K8T890 is compatible with any contemporary Athlon 64 processors. To be fair we have to say that unlike NVIDIA, VIA has never had any problems with the implementation of the HyperTransport bus. As you remember, the first NVIDIA nForce4 chipset revisions didn抰 support 1GHz HyperTransport bus. This was actually one of the reasons why nForce4 4x chipset appeared. This solution supported HyperTransport with the working frequency limited to only 800MHz. VIA K8T890, on the contrary, works with 1GHz HyperTransport bus without any problems, and even allows increasing the frequency of this bus over the nominal value.
As for the PCI Express bus, the features of K8T890 are pretty standard here: the chipset supports 20 PCI Express lanes and up to 5 connected devices. In other words, since the graphics card requires PCI Express x16 interface, VIA K8T890 supports up to 4 PCI Express x1 devices.
