In a press release made available today, VIA has introduced their latest chipset for the Athlon market, the VIA K8T900. They have begun providing samples to manufacturers, and likely we'll see boards sporting the newer chipset fairly soon. Supporting up to 6 PCI x1 connectors, SATA II and PCI Ex 16 (or 2 8x slots), the chipset seems to be designed around integration and customization. It also includes Via's power-saving technologies that have already earned fame in the embedded community. The chipset can be used in multiple sockets.

VIA's chipsets have earned much more respect in the past few years as the biggest competitor to the nForce, both by offering a usually lower price and decent performance. It's interesting to see how this will fare against nForce 4 and nVidia's up and coming line. You can read more technical details about the chipset at VIA's site.