The chips that drive the board
Albatron uses VIA's popular K8T800 to power the K8X800 Pro II, which is a wise choice considering the chipset's solid performance and integrated features. Unlike NVIDIA's single-chip nForce3, the K8T800 uses a more traditional two-chip configuration with north and south bridge components.

Since the Athlon 64's memory controller resides on the processor, the K8T800's north bridge chip houses only the chipset's AGP 8X interface and HyperTransport processor link. The K8T800's HyperTransport upstream and downstream links are 16 bits wide and run at 800MHz, providing 1.6GB/sec of bandwidth in each direction. By comparison, the nForce3's HyperTransport implementation uses an 8-bit upstream link and a 16-bit downstream link, both running at 600MHz. The upstream link provides 600MB/sec of bandwidth, and the downstream 1.2GB/sec.

Speaking of links, VIA uses its proprietary V-Link interconnect to hook together the K8T800's north and south bridge chips. This latest V-Link offers 1.06GB/sec of bandwidth, which gives the chips a nice big pipe to feed data through.

At the south bridge, we have VIA's VT8237, which the K8T800 shares with VIA's KT600, PT800, and PT880 chipsets. Because it sees action paired with a wide range of north bridge chips targeted at different market segments, the VT8237 does a little bit of everything. For starters, the chipset supports up to eight USB ports, though Albatron only provides external access to six of those ports on the K8X800 Pro II. The VT8237 also supports two channels of ATA/133 and a couple of Serial ATA ports. VIA has a nifty V-RAID software that can span RAID 0 or 1 arrays across drives connected to the VT8237's Serial ATA ports, but RAID isn't supported for "parallel" ATA drives.

While we're on the topic of Serial ATA and RAID, it's important to note a distinct advantage that the VT8237's SATA controller has over third party SATA chips that reside on the PCI bus. Because it's integrated directly into the south bridge chip, the VT8237's SATA controller doesn't have to share limited PCI bus bandwidth with other devices, which can potentially improve performance in environments where numerous PCI devices are present.

The K8X800 Pro II's PCI bus is still shared between the board's six PCI slots and its Ethernet, Firewire, and audio implementations. Albatron uses 3Com's Marvell 940-MV00 Gigabit Ethernet chip to cover the board's networking needs, and VIA's VT6307 for the board's IEEE 1394 Firewire ports.

On the audio front, the K8X800 Pro II taps VIA's Envy24PT audio controller, which feeds 7.1 output channels with a little help from VIA's VT1616 codec and Wolfson's WM8720 DAC. Though both the Envy24PT and WM8720 support 24-bit audio at sampling rates of at least 96kHz, VIA's VT1616 can only sample 18-bit audio at up to 48kHz. The VT1616's lack of 24-bit audio support wouldn't be a big deal if the Envy24PT's front output channels were routed through the Wolfson DAC, which would at least let users enjoy 24-bit audio through a set of stereo speakers or headphones. However the K8X800 Pro II runs the Envy24PT's front output channels through the VT1616 instead; the only way to get at the Envy24PT's 24-bit audio is to bypass the VT1616 and use the board's digital S/PDIF ports.

To be fair, the VT1616's sampling rate and resolution limitations really aren't Albatron's fault; VIA's Envy24PT reference design specifies which outputs are run through which codec, and I've yet to see an Envy24PT implementation deviate from this design. Since the K8X800 Pro II has both coaxial and Tos-Link S/PDIF input and output ports, Albatron has given users plenty of ways to skirt the VT1616 and tap directly into the Envy24PT's 24-bit capabilities.