Swansong for the XP Era: VIA KT880 Chipset Challenges nForce2

Optional Gigabit Ethernet

Standard Gigabit: VIA is now delivering the VT6210.

Most people are familiar with VIA's VT6103 network chip, which supports 10 and 100 MBit/s. But now the VT6120 is also available, offering an additional 1 GBit/s.

KT880 Vs. KT600 Vs. nForce 2 Ultra 400

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Chipset VIA KT600 VIA KT880 NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400
Launch August 2003 February 2004 May 2003
Platform Socket 462 Socket 462 Socket 462
Processors AMD Duron/Athlon/XP AMD Duron/Athlon/XP AMD Duron/Athlon/XP
Multi-Processor Support no no no
Northbridge VIA KT600 VIA KT880 NVIDIA nForce2 SPP
Southbridge VIA VT8235/8237 VIA VT8237 NVIDIA nForce2 MCP / MCP-T
Front Side Bus 133/166/200 MHz DDR 133/166/200 MHz DDR 133/166/200 MHz DDR
Memory DDR266, DDR333, DDR400 DDR266, DDR333, DDR400 DDR266, DDR333, DDR400
Asynchronous Memory Mode yes yes yes
Max. DIMMs 4 4 3
Max. RAM 4 GB 8 GB 3 GB
UltraDMA/33/66/100/133 yes/yes/yes/yes yes/yes/yes/yes yes/yes/yes/yes
# USB 8 8 6
Max. # PCI 8 8 6
Integrated Graphics no no With nForce2 IGPGeForce4 MX
Integrated Sound 5.1 / 7.1 7.1 5.1
AGO 4X/8X yes/yes yes/yes yes/yes
ACPI yes yes yes
USB 2.0 / FireWire yes / no yes / no yes / yes
Ethernet 100 MBit/s 1 GBit/s 100 MBit/s
Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.