AMD 762 (MP) Northbridge and VIA 686B Southbridge Incompatibilities

[So]

I don't personally know who to blame for all the kt133-a problems, but I had both a kt7(not 'A' therefore no kt133-a/686B problems) - I used it trobuble free until I got my hands on an A7V133. The Asus board gave me hell, it may have been VIA's fault, it may have been creative's fault, but I finally gave up and dug out my KT7, viola! no more mysterious crashes under Win2k. The A7V is the third board which has been home to my SBLive! and that was the only time which it gave me trouble. I have come to the conclusion that both VIA and Creative are at fault (and from the good reports I have heard of other brands of boards, possibly a small amount of blame rests on ASUS' shoulders.) Anyway, I resolved to simply avoid and MB with the 686B southbridge and wait until the next generation of chipsets becomes available, one that is significantly more stable - at first I was looking at the much fabled next revision of the KT266. Since there has been so little talk of that lately and the Nforce looks so good I have decided to go in that direction. I have perfectly fine stability with my KT133 based board, so in the future I will consider a VIA based board - but I will be much more wary, and if NVIDIA manages to create a chipset that is all it professes to be, I will look to them first, at least until they create something that gives me as much trouble as the KT133A has. Oh, and as for the USB problem, I was able to resolve it thanks to the good ol' KT7 FAQ, but I may have been just a little lucky.

 

[Insane3D]

My Epox 8K7A with a 686B Southbridge is extremely stable...even with an overclocked Athlon 4...

 

[NesuD]

<< 1) USB devices dropping out in Win2k >>




<< 2) The SB Live! problem which had me stumped for MONTHS until it was officially announced that there was something wrong with the combo (after I sent in my CDRW for RMA b/c I thought that it was causing the corruption problems when burning). >>




<< 3) Random lockups in Win2k here and there. >>



I think maybe there is something to the idea that it isn't necessarily all the chipset as much as the individual boards themselves.

I have never had any usb problems with my turbo
SB live has worked fine all along did see a few burner issues which went away with a bios update and the driver fix from via.
Random lockups in win 2k? I don't know what those are never had one. leave my system up 24/7 and only reboot because i am monkeying with drivers or installing a new app or something that requires a reboot. If it is striclty a chipset issue I simply don't see how the problems can vary so widely from each motherboard design.

 

[WetWilly]

LXi,

Works with AMD761? You sure about that? 'cause I dont think the AMD761 supports V-link at all

The VT8231 doesn't use V-Link but uses the PCI bus like the 686B. It's similar to the VT8233 which uses V-Link. The VT8231 = VT8233 - V-Link - 2 USB ports + integrated Super I/O. The VT8231 definitely works with the AMD 761. Chaintech makes a board with it.

 

[LXi]

Oh I see, well, if thats the case, then I think the 8231 is ought to replace 686B.

 

[damocles]

Hmm

Aces are getting in on the bandwagon now


A heated but very enlightening discussion has (once again taken place at the Ace's hardware forums. Our last newspost about the incompatibilities between AMD762 Northbridge and the VIA686B southbridge has resulted in some extremely interesting comments. Joe James, Tyan's Sales Director:

There is no significant cost advantage to using the VIA southbridge on a Dual Athlon board. By far the largest cost component of the chipset if the northbridge which is obvious from its 1000-pin+ BGA package compared to the much smaller southbridge. The cost delta between AMD's and VIA's southbridge is a single digit dollar number, which is no way worth the risk of using a chipset combo that has not been validated by AMD (or by VIA).


And it's foolish for my competitors to spend an extra month debugging and validating an unproven chipset pair when they could just go with the AMD north and south pair. But why should I tell my competitors how stupid they are? Maybe just to set the record straight...you're not going to save $30 by using a VIA southbridge on a Dual Athlon board. And if some Taiwanese company still wants to use it their time to market will be adversely affected. I'm very happy that Tyan has sense enough to not use Hybrid chipsets in the interest of saving a few cents on a DP board, and I just don't know how other MB companies can justify it.


Chris points out that there is about $26 difference between the two southbridges. He also states what seems to be a general consensus : &quot; I trust AMD's southbridge over Via's anyday &quot;


Whole thing is worth a read

 

[MadRat]

Abit BH6.

Paste voltage regulators.

'nuff said.

 

[NFS4]

<< Abit BH6.

Paste voltage regulators.

'nuff said. >>


Umm, what are you talking about?:Q

 

[MadRat]

What part don't you understand, the &quot;nuff said&quot; or the lack of quality parts that went into many a BH6?

 

[NFS4]

<< What part don't you understand, the &quot;nuff said&quot; or the lack of quality parts that went into many a BH6? >>


I mean, what does that have to do with VIA or AMD?

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Madrat is saying the problem on the Abit is due to cheap components...i.e. &quot;paste voltage regulators&quot;. I'm not sure what he means by that. I've heard of electrolytic paste used in capacitors, but most voltage regulators utilize a zener diode of some type. Perhaps he's refering to the capacitors that are often involved in the same circuitry.

 

[WoundedWallet]

I'm just wondering with the Dual Tulatin is gonna cost more than Tyan MP...

Right now a Tyan MP plus two 1.2 AthlonMP plus 512 MB of registered DDR is $953. Add that stoopid power supply and we're talking about $1100 for this set up.

Anybody got any clue on prices of a Dual Foster or Dual Tulatins?

 

[Athlon4all]

Lets see, IWill DX400-SN for $889, 2x 1.7GHz Xeons for $938, 2x Samsung RDRAM PC800 256MB $234 for hmmm just about $2000. Any buyers? Dunno about Tualtian