Re:Really? I didn't see this in EETimes...
The key story is the second one, where they talk about the 50% increase in performance observed using VC133 - with a Pentium III 600 no less!.
This was using VIA's chipset that Intel had an full blown stroke over. They completely fell apart. After looking at this, maybe you can understand why. VC adds 3% to costs, has no royalties, needs no new equipment or testers, and works just as well with DDR.
You remember the incident don't you? While being investigated by Justice for anti-trust, Intel first threatened, then actually filed a lawsuit to try to block VIA from producing these parts because they performed too well.
eetimes.com
eet.com
VIA has the PRO133 and KX133, ALI has the TNT2, and SIS has the SIS630 - all supporting VC DRAM.
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The Aladdin TNT2 chipset is sampling now and will ship in volume during the fourth quarter
with the M1535D for a combined price of $33 in 10,000-unit lots. Gigabyte Technology,
AsusTEK, C.P. Technology, Acer, and Abit Computer will offer Aladdin TNT2-based
motherboards, according to ALI..
Unlike competing products, the new
chipset can be configured to share PC main memory, or assign up to 1.5 Gbytes of EDO,
SDRAM, or Virtual Channel SDRAM memory. The addition of a dedicated frame buffer can
boost the chipset's graphics performance by 50%, she said.
=========================================================
What's more, using a 133-MHz variant of SDRAM from NEC, known as Virtual Channel
Memory, with a 133-MHz front-side bus yields a memory subsystem performance increase of
more than 50 percent over systems with PC100 SDRAMs and a 100-MHz front side bus,
Ishizuka said.
(Ishizuka's results were based on a Stream for DOS benchmark. The test system used a First
International Computer (FIC) motherboard with a 600-MHz Pentium III CPU, 128 Mbytes of
RAM and Via's Apollo Pro 133 chip set. Both the PC133 and PC100 CAS-2 double-sided
dual-in-line memory modules were manufactured by Micron Technology. NEC provided the
Virtual Channel Memory module.) |
