VIA Technical Forum - Day 1: Politics and Chipsets

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Even Tyan had a P4X266 motherboard on display. If Tyan is really serious about getting into the enthusiast market that they've ignored for some time, a quick release of a solid P4X266 motherboard is one way of doing it. Their TigerMP doesn't have overclocking features but a reliable and widely available P4X266 motherboard could turn things around for them as well. Recently Tyan has been acting out of character; the previously pro-Intel manufacturer is shipping the current fastest dual processor x86 platform based on an AMD chipset and now this. Kudos to Tyan, now get this board on the market and we'll all be happy (well, most of us at least).

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Intel is not the only company faced with tough competition; VIA is also worried about loosing motherboard market share to competing companies, mainly SiS. As many of you know, and our SiS 735 review shows, the SiS 735 chipset has been giving some competing VIA solutions a run for their money. Both consumers and motherboard manufacturers are excited about SiS 735 boards due to their low price and high performance. Naturally, VIA is a bit concerned.

In response to this concern, we have already seen VIA's marketing team at work. At Computex we reported of VIA promising higher performance BIOSes and other benefits to motherboard manufacturers that stayed away from the SiS 735. It seems that VIA, through experience, learned what works when it comes to securing chipset market share.

Motherboard manufactures are split when it comes to the rebate offer. Some manufactures have chosen to not produce SiS motherboards, citing both the rebates as well as some issues that have been encountered with the SiS chipsets. Other manufactures have chosen to respond to consumer demand and create SiS 735 motherboards as well as VIA solutions. We got a chance to talk to SiS about the rumors going around and they said that they were not really concerned with the pressure that VIA is placing on board manufacturers. They believe that the market will decide which product is best. With the release of the KT266A the unfortunate truth for SiS is that the 735 is no longer the best product. A hard hitter in both products and marketing, a dangerous and very powerful combination for VIA.

The final buzzword of motherboard chipsets, nForce, seems to be not nearly as buzz-worthy as it was a few months ago. Motherboard manufactures have become a bit concerned with the lack of maturity on the upcoming NVIDIA chipset and the speed that it has promised to offer. Only time will tell if the manufacturers' concerns are a good prediction of market reception.