Desktop Chipsets

VIA Vinyl Multichannel Audio Suite
Delivering rich, warm surround sound at resolutions as high as 24/96 through up to six- or eight-channel outputs, the VIA Vinyl Audio 5.1 surround sound and VIA Vinyl Gold Audio 7.1 surround sound enables crisp, clear performance, representing the highest levels of audio quality in a mainstream integrated or onboard solution.

High Performance CPU Interface
The VIA CN896 chipset supports connections to the VIA C7?, C7?-D and Eden processors through the bandwidth-efficient VIA V4 Bus.

Advanced Memory Controller
VIA's acclaimed FastStream64 memory controller enables lightening fast memory access speeds and optimal system performance, supporting up to 4GB of DDR333/400 memory or DDR2 533/667 memory.

Extensive Display support
With support for VIA DuoView+ capability, the VIA CN896 supports multi-monitor and extended desktop. This includes a dedicated CRT displayer interface, supporting up to 1920x1440. The CN896 also supports a two Digital Video ports supporting DVI/LVDS transmitter (VT1632A/VT1636) and TV encoder (VT1622A/VT1625).

The VIA Chrome9 HC IGP graphics core also integrates the Chromotion 3.0 Video Display Engine featuring MPEG-2 decoding acceleration, adaptive de-interlacing, video deblocking, and a comprehensive range of hi-def output support.

VIA Chrome9 IGP DirectX 9.0 Graphics Core
The 128-bit 2D graphics engine enables acceleration of high quality graphics features, allowing all productivity applications to run with the best appearance possible while not sacrificing system performance. The 128-bit 3D graphics engines features dual pixel rendering pipes for advanced 3D rendering, and is capable of two textures per pass with a triangle rate up to 4.5 million triangles per second, a pixel rate up to 200 million pixels per second, and a texel bilinear fill rate up to 400 million texels per second.

The Chromotion CE Video Display Engine employs a multi-faceted approach to displaying multimedia content, implementing a number of advanced tools at every stage of video processing. These include integrated MPEG-2 decoding, for flawless digital video playback with ultra-low CPU-utilization, and advanced rendering tools such as Adaptive De-Interlacing and Video Deblocking, which ensure clearer playback of digital content on all display devices such as CRT, LCD, standard definition TV and HDTV up to 1080p resolution*.

The 3D graphics engine of the CN896 chipset offers the industry's only simultaneous usage of single-pass multitexturing and single-cycle trilinear filtering. This provides stunning image quality without performance loss. The integrated video accelerator also offloads the CPU during MPEG playback.

The VIA CN896 chipset features the VIA Chrome9 HC integrated graphics processor (IGP) featuring a DirectX? 9.0 3D accelerator for high performance and a 2D accelerator for productivity applications.

The VIA CN896 features a dedicated CRT interface as well as outstanding flexibility for additional video ports such as DVI transmitter, LVDS transmitter, SDTV TV encoder and HDTV TV encoder. This provides customers with the ability to tailor the CN896 to be suitable for use with flat panel displays, a wide variety of LCD panels, TFT color panels, DVI monitors and TV displays. Separate display engines enable two outputs to display at the same time, with different information at different resolutions, pixel depths and refresh rates. The CN896 therefore provides many options for customers designing thin client, industrial PCs, point of sale machines and other embedded product. The inclusion of a 16 lane PCI Express port provides additional upgrade options for desktops, whilst keeping the base configuration at a low cost.

Further flexibility can be realized with the availability of one 16-Lane PCI Express port for high end graphics cards and a further 1-Lane PCI Express port for peripheral cards.

The VIA CN896 features a high bandwidth VIA Ultra V-Link communication between the chipset's North and South bridges at 533MB/sec. When combined with solutions such as the market-leading VIA VT8237S or VT8251 South Bridges and a broad array of VIA companion chips, the CN896 provides a comprehensive range of storage, multimedia and connectivity features, including native Serial ATA II, support for 6-channel or 8-channel VIA Vinyl Audio, VIA Velocity Gigabit Ethernet controllers, wireless LAN connectivity, USB2.0 and IEEE 1394.

The VIA CN896 chipset supports the VIA V4 Bus to 800MHz, for VIA C7? and VIA Eden(V4) embedded processors and VIA C7?-D desktop processors, which have been recognized by Microsoft as designed for Windows Vista. It also supports the VIA PowerSaver feature, which acts as an automatic transmission to lower or raise the processors frequency and voltage depending on the workload, reducing overall CPU power consumption by as much as 40 percent.