PCI Express trained on AMD 64

By Alun Williams

Posted on 24 Sep 2004 at 12:30

PCI Express connectivity comes to the AMD 64 platform courtesy of the new VIA K8T890 chipset.

PCIe is designed to deliver increased system bandwidth - for example, supporting intensive multimedia demands. VIA expects the chipset to be incorporated into motherboards designed for the latest models of AMD processors including the Athlon 64, Opteron, and Sempron designs.

'By enabling PCI Express,' said Wenchi Chen, the CEO of VIA Technologies, 'we believe that all the pieces are in place on the AMD64 processor platform, meaning all users can now upgrade to a 64-bit AMD processor, safe in the knowledge they have a future proof platform.'

Beneficiaries should include support for PCI Express x16 graphics cards, using 4GB/sec of bandwidth, both upstream and downstream, as well as Gigabit Ethernet connections and bandwidth hungry HDTV tuner cards. The K8T890 chipset also supports up to four PCI Express x1 connections, each offering 250MB/sec bi-directional bandwidth for peripheral devices - double the maximum theoretical bandwidth provided by existing PCI 2.2 peripheral connections.

'We are very pleased to see VIA bring PCI Express support to the AMD64 platform,' said Marty Seyer, general manager of AMD's Microprocessor Business Unit. 'Combining the phenomenal bandwidth of PCI Express connectivity with HyperTransport technology as well as the latest high-performance graphics cards and peripheral devices, customers can continue to unleash the full performance potential of AMD64 technology.'