ALi in 2001: DDR SDRAM for all

Final Words

ALi is in a very interesting situation now.  If VIA does start producing Pentium 4 chipsets to accent their current line of Athlon products, and if VIA does start focusing more on the Intel market as it seems like by their promotion of the Apollo Pro 266 over the KT266 for an early launch, then ALi could be just what AMD needs to put some pressure on VIA.  Remember that AMD is still betting their entire future on the success of these third party chipset manufacturers, so they definitely need full support. 

With competition restored to the chipset market things could get very interesting for the consumer.  Anyone recall what buying a motherboard in the Socket-7 days was like?  With the VIA MVP1, MVP2, MVP3 and MVP4 solutions from VIA up against the ALi and SiS solutions, it was a much more complicated world than it is today.  Motherboard manufacturers either had to pick one chipset vendor and stick with them, or more likely, they had to grossly diversify their product lines which isn’t the best solution. 

The real question that still exists to this day is, can ALi compete with VIA?  We have always ragged on VIA for having poor memory performance but with the experience they’ve gained since the Apollo Pro days, at least the VIA drivers are to the point where they aren’t problematic if properly setup.  However ALi has been virtually out of the game for the past year, can they be relied upon to produce not only stable chipsets but solid drivers to accompany them?

While the race to bring DDR SDRAM to the Athlon seems to be heating up, in all actuality the concentration needs to be placed on bringing DDR SDRAM down to the value level which will happen in the coming months.  A platform with DDR support and integrated video could make a very happy home for AMD’s next-generation Duron processors.  Let’s see if ALi will be the ones to bring that to the table, or will they end up taking a much longer leave of absence after this round in the ring.