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April 22, 2001
Summary
The ASUS A7VI-VM is ASUS first approach to the VIA KM133 chipset, featuring the integrated (S3) ProSavage2000 graphics controller. As a budget solution, the board sports the VIA AC97 integrated sound controller. In case an upgraded graphics solution is needed, a standard AGP slot is provided. The AMR slot of the VIA reference design has been abandoned in favor of a third PCI slot, leaving at least some expendability. Two memory slots allow for system memory configurations of up to 1024 MB SDRAM. Theoretically, the BIOS offers enough possibilities to tweak the system performance, however, in practice, some of the settings are non-functional. As a budget solution, the A7VI-VM is not a bad choice for non-gamers, however, the graphics subsystem has some limitations caused mostly by the exclusive use of the united memory architecture to feed the graphics controller. Because of other limitations as, e.g. the maximum of 107 MHz useable FSB, any user considering using an external AGP card will probably be better off using a standard board. On the other hand, for a cheap, integrated solution, the A7VI-VM is probably not a bad choice.
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Somehow, the trend in the PC market can be compared to what happened in the automotive industry a few decades ago. Muscle cars were replaced by compact vehicles that not necessarily offered the power and comfort of the overgrown gas-guzzlers but were a reasonable compromise. History started to repeat itself in the PC market about 2 years ago, however, time is a critical issue in marketing. When Intel came out with the i810 chipset, everyone was still preoccupied with the absolute power of the system and nobody cared about the elegance of the solution, which, honestly speaking, wasn't there anyway.
With the i815 chipset, Intel offered a refined solution, running at higher bus speed and better performance but one of the centerpieces that made the i810 chipset falter, that is, the i752 graphics controller still prevailed. A spin-off of the i740 graphics chip with limited performance to begin with, this graphics controller is acceptable for 2D applications but bogs down when it comes to gaming or any other higher level 3D application. In addition, regardless of the actual design of the graphics controller and its capabilities, one of the key issues that define performance of any graphics subsystem is the memory bandwidth available to feed the graphics engine. In the i810 and i815 chipsets some of the limitations of the united memory architecture were ameliorated with a dedicated display cache (optional as AGP-Inline Memory Module in the 815 chipset) but even that did not add very much in terms of graphics power.
This, of course, raises the next question: is it really worth to embed a more powerful and sophisticated controller into the chipset when there is the a priori limitation of the memory bandwidth that will cripple the performance, no matter how good the engine is? One possible solution may be, at least for bandwidth hogging textures, to use a compression routine to alleviate the bandwidth problem, at least partially. This is exactly where VIA already had some assets. After the acquisition of S3 / Number9 Technologies, VIA had full access to the S3 texture compression protocol (S3TC) which is an integral feature of Microsoft DX6 and higher. Therefore was not surprising that the logical step for VIA towards any new integrated platform comprised integrating the last and most advanced S3 engine, the Savage2000 into their approach of an integrated North Bridge. Needless to say that the Savage2000, even in the format of a standalone AGP card never made it past a wallflower existence, not that it was a bad card but it missed it's window of opportunity by months.
To make matters worse, there is no field in the PC market moving as rapidly as the graphics sector, showing turnover rates of about 6 months or less before a product becomes obsolete. Now, one year later, what can be expected from a somewhat outdated graphics engine in conjunction with the inherent limitation of a united memory architecture? Certainly not much of a gaming rig, at least not in the basic configuration but possibly enough to appeal to less ambitious users for whom gaming performance is secondary. In addition, VIA did not make the same mistake as Intel with the i810 chipset as to not include an AGP slot for those that are interesting in upgrading. This leaves the possibility to actually use the VIA KM133 chipset as the user pleases, that is, either as a simple integrated solution, or else, as a basis for any other high-end graphics adapter.
One advantage of the KM133 chipset is the small footprint of the reference design PCB. This Flex ATX form factor including the reduced expandability already almost annihilates the extra cost for the integrated graphics controller. PCI slots are becoming more expensive than silicon. If one takes VIA's reference design, slashes the AMR to add another PCI slot, adds the name ASUS to a VIA KM133 chipset-based board, one would expect to see the A7VI-VM. Shall we?
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