VIA and SiS are likely to miss securing 4th quarter orders, as the two companies will not be able to ramp up their PCIe-supporting north bridge chipsets until October or even later, this year.

In addition, the two companies are expected to meet strong competition from ATI Technologies, when the Canada-based graphics solution provider begins marketing its PCIe-supporting system chips, the RS400 and RS480, in the fourth quarter, according to market sources.

Although SiS is expected to start volume shipments of its PCIe-enabled SiS965 south bridge later this month, company sources said that its PCIe-supporting SiS656 and SiS649 north bridge chips for Intel Pentium 4 CPUs will not be available until mid- or late-October.

VIA's PCIe-supporting PT894 north bridge, which also supports Intel Pentium 4 CPUs, will also arrive in late October due to a redesign process of the chipset, according to company sources.

However, sources at SiS pointed out that the company's revenues are expected to grow 26% sequentially in September due to increased sales of K8 chipsets to PC OEMs, while VIA also reported increased sales of K8 chipsets to the channel this month.

VIA estimated shipments of K8 chipsets will account for 10% of its overall chipset shipments in the fourth quarter, while SiS said that the proportion of its K8 chipsets will reach 12-15% in the same period.

From DigiTimes