Apparently VIA Technologies may be considering (or already) producing a Dual Channel chipset for Athlon XP to compete directly against nVidia and their high-end nForce2 400 product.

It's just a rumour at this stage, but the move on VIA's part certainly would make a lot of sense but maybe been left a little too late with Athlon 64 due launch in one month? Back to X-Bit Labs for this story, as well.

Information about VIA's chipset with dual-channel memory controller for AMD Athlon XP microprocessors has been floating around since the beginning of the year (see this news-story) and seemed to be pretty logical. Given that VIA Technologies plans to offer an Intel Pentium 4 intended chipset PT880 with dual-channel DDR SDRAM as well as QBM memory support this September, there should be no problems with integrating the same memory controller into a North Bridge designed to work with AMD Athlon XP CPUs. Hence, if VIA Technologies feels necessity, it will launch such chipset in order to compete with NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 in higher-end Socket A market segment.