Thoughts
VIA's K8T800 Pro chipset won't do much for the average consumer who's just interested in stock performance. Our tests have shown that benchmark performance is within a percent or two of an established K8T800-based motherboard, and usually just a touch better. The Pro part of the naming scheme should perhaps be labelled as Enthusiast. A working PCI / AGP lock is just what enthusiasts have been hankering after since the inception of AMD's Athlon 64 processors. We already know that stock performance is damn good in comparison with Intel's, but enthusiasts have been able to take Intel's dual-channel chipsets and CPUs to 300MHz FSB and beyond. Here's where the K8T800 Pro and NVIDIA's competing nForce3 250 (Pro) will score marks over their respective predecessors.Other notable enhancements are harder to spot. There's a rise in HyperTransport Bus speed, which is the link between CPU(s) and chipset bridge, and, later on, a more feature-filled southbridge, named VT8251. If you're new to AMD's Athlon 64 CPUs there's little point in purchasing the older K8T800; the newer iteration matches its performance and adds a few worthwhile extras. If, however, you've already got a decent S940/S754 board and don't push the system too far, there's little point in considering the Pro version.
The reference board has shown that motherboard manufacturers will have an easy time in switching between present K8T800-based production to Pro boards. We've seen most major manufacturers produce press releases that already highlight their new Pro-encompassing range. NVIDIA's raised the Athlon 64 features' bar with its revised nForce3 250Gb chipset, VIA's done just enough to stay competitive. We just can't help feeling that the K8T800 Pro is the chipset that should have launched last September, really.
