After leading a wallflower existence over the past few months, VIA is back to challenge the nVidia dominance in the Socket A domain. A redesigned memory controller capable of withstanding more than 230 MHz operating frequency along with expanded USB 2.0 capacity and finally the native Serial ATA support, including SATA RAID 0 and RAID 1 are amongst the high-lights of the new platform. Integrated network capabilities have been around for some time in VIA's South Bridges, so has sound but the latest Vinyl Audio has made some splash all over the web. Unfortunately, Vinyl Audio requires VIA's own AC'97 VT1616 audio CODEC and ASUS is going with the Analog Devices AD1980 CODEC, meaning, we'll have to skip Vinyl Audio for now.
