VIA PT894 & PT880 Pro Chipset Preview
Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and 3DMark05
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Intel rules the gaming benchmarks here, both with the 925XE and 915G chipsets. The PT880 Pro doesn't do very well with its PCI Express slot populated (the x4 slot scores about 78 frames per second with a GeForce 6800 Ultra), so we used an AGP 6800 Ultra instead, yielding better results. Oddly enough, the PT894 seems to also suffer from lackluster performance using PCI Express graphics.
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We tried a couple of different configurations in order to get the PT880 Pro working in Half-Life 2, including AGP graphics cards, PCI Express graphics cards, and difference memory modules. No matter what, though, the game wouldn't run through a timedemo. Given the performance of the PT894, we doubt it would have been able to match Intel's performance anyway.
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The same story we've seen several times before is retold in the 3DMark05 CPU module. Mainly, Intel dominates while VIA's PT880 Pro trails slightly, followed by the PT894.
