"Court throws out Via charges against Intel"

[Wingznut]

Yahoo News

Intel sued Via in England last September, alleging that the company infringed its patents by selling Pentium 4-compatible chipsets without a license. In a countersuit filed last December, Via claimed that Intel broke European competition laws by refusing to grant it a license to use Pentium 4 technology in its chipsets.

Via argued that Intel's infringement lawsuit was an attempt to force it to accept an unfavorable Pentium 4 license. Via also claimed that Intel's refusal to grant a license was an abuse of its dominant market position.

The court decided against Via on the grounds that Intel's refusing to grant the license was not a life-or-death matter for Via. A refusal to grant a license would not in itself be an abuse of Intel's position, the court said, unless the refusal created such exceptional circumstances as the "complete elimination of all competition within the relevant market," according to a case report by the British law firm Masons.

This was not the case in the current situation, the court said, since several other companies continue to compete with Intel in the Pentium 4 chipset market.

IMHO... With all of the other exceptional P4 chipsets out there, who in their right mind would buy a Via chipset for their P4, anyway?

 

[ElFenix]

i'd still like them to get a license at the price/chip that SiS or ALI paid for theirs. what it seemed like is that intel offered a license at a price that would make the via chipset non-competitive, so via decided to pull the cross licensing thing out again. lets face it, via has far more pull in the mobo industry than SiS and ALI combined, and could be seen as a serious threat to intel's chipset business.

 

[Booster]

No matter what the zealots say, VIA chipsets are of a much higher quality/price/performance ratio than many think. I know there's a lot of newborn SiS fans running around, but their chipsets quality just isn't up to the par, it's obvious. I wouldn't touch a SiS or an Ali chipset with a 10 foot pole, I tell you. Not that I like VIA, but had I been put in the situation when I could only choose a third party chipset VIA would be my only choice, without any doubt.

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
i'd still like them to get a license at the price/chip that SiS or ALI paid for theirs.

You know this for fact, or is that a presumption?

I honestly don't know any more than anyone else about this issue.

 

[Pabster]

Wingznut Pez wrote:

"IMHO... With all of the other exceptional P4 chipsets out there, who in their right mind would buy a Via chipset for their P4, anyway?"

Ditto. Why in the hell save a couple bucks on a cheap mainboard, only to spend your free time installing drivers and patches? Not to mention the memory configuration issues which still surround VIA's P4 efforts. No thanks. With the wide variety of rock solid core logic out there for the P4 (read: Intel ... i845-D, i845-E, i845-G, i850, i850E) why on earth would anyone piss with VIA?

Booster wrote:

"No matter what the zealots say, VIA chipsets are of a much higher quality/price/performance ratio than many think. I know there's a lot of newborn SiS fans running around, but their chipsets quality just isn't up to the par, it's obvious. I wouldn't touch a SiS or an Ali chipset with a 10 foot pole, I tell you. Not that I like VIA, but had I been put in the situation when I could only choose a third party chipset VIA would be my only choice, without any doubt."

LOL. Do you really believe that, or did you just have to throw some pro-VIA semantics in to this thread?

VIA chipsets of a much higher quality or price/performance ratio than what? ALi?

SiS has some very impressive core logic out there for the P4. SiS 645 and 645/DX are excellent in the stability and performance department. None of the headaches surrounding VIA's P4 efforts, better RAM support, and no 4-in-1 chaos. Which would you really choose?

If I had to purchase a board and VIA was the only choice, I'd go without. YMMV.

 

[oldfart]

IMHO... With all of the other exceptional P4 chipsets out there, who in their right mind would buy a Via chipset for their P4, anyway?

Exactamundo.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Was there any doubt?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Wingznut PEZ

Originally posted by: ElFenix
i'd still like them to get a license at the price/chip that SiS or ALI paid for theirs.

You know this for fact, or is that a presumption?

I honestly don't know any more than anyone else about this issue.

i think if they were offered a license at the same rate the other two companies were paying and they didn't take it up then via deserves what they get, which is no one picking up their p4 chipset but a few second tier vendors. frankly i think the cross licensing agreement is quite shaky, especially if it wasn't spelled out in their buyout with s3. but i don't think intel offered the license to them at the same rate. the scuttlebutt was that it was significantly higher. and since we all know that mobo makers cut darn near ever corner possible to make mobos cheap, that would have priced via's chipset out of the market. again, its speculation on my part, but i think its what happened. its what i'd attempt to do in intel's situation if i thought i could get away with it without violating some anti-trust law.

 

[Dulanic]

P4X333 still beats the P4 with PC800 which is pretty damn good... and it even comes VERY close to PC1066 which is better then any other DDR chipset.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzE2

 

[oldfart]

Note that there were NO Intel DDR chipset boards in that test.

 

[FishTankX]

"IMHO... With all of the other exceptional P4 chipsets out there, who in their right mind would buy a Via chipset for their P4, anyway? "

People who want killer DDR333 performance, which the i845G isn't validated for. Comes within striking distance of i850E with PC1066 in business applications.. which is pretty crazy.

Remember, that the P4X266A was the *first* chipset to have 133MHZ FSB support, and it blew most chipsets out of the water. The P4X266A with DDR266 came within striking distance of the SiS645 with DDR333. Pretty impressive, eh?

Via knows how to design one heck of a memory controller. The P4X333 beats all chipsets in the same arena. It's pretty sad... like the AMD760 VS KT266A.

Oh by the way, why wasn't the i845E not validated for DDR333? Are you allowed to comment on this issue? I would think it'd provide a nice performance boost. Maybe it's just a time issue...

Anyways, Via chipsets rule on the cheap over here in China. Can you believe an ECS P4X266A motherboard, with full 133MHZ FSB support, sells for around the 50$ mark, and supports DDR *and* SDRAM? (That's a big thing in China, where the price premium for DDR is still a remarkable 20% or so) Plus SiS chipset motherboards, while cheap, still have minor supply problems and Via P4 chipsets are stable enough to put up with, seeing that a Via chipset motherboard sells for nearly half of what a Intel chipset motherboard sells for. 50$ is a big thing for an OEM here, enough to give a computer 256MB of RAM over the typical 128. Remember, in Asian markets except Japan, price rules.

So Via definatley wins on price. SiS can't compete because Intel's liscenscing fees are insane! You know, Wingznut Pez, Intel is offering Via a deal on a P4 liscensce, but it's like being stuck with 70% income tax. It makes the market unbearable. They don't wanna get stuck on that kinda business relationship, so they bailed out and just sold their chipset motherboards in China where intel can't cause havok, and gave the chips cheap to Chinese vendors (Who Intel doesn't really care about) and the result is P4X333 motherboards selling around the the 700 yuan (Eh... 90$) mark. Hell of alot cheaper than any RAMBUS alternative, and deadly close to RAMBUS in performance. For a gaming rig, where Performance is critical, stability is not, and an extra 100$ could mean a better grahpics card, which one would you choose, Pez?

P4X333(70$) + 256MB DDR333(50$) + P4 1.6A@2.133 (120$) + Ti4200 (175$) = 415$, a killer gaming rig.

i845G mobo 150$ + 256MB DDR 333@333 (through divider work) + P4 1.6A 120$ + Geforce4MX 440 = Almost the same, not so killer gaming rig.

When you're on a budget, which one would you pick? The P4X333 is cheaper than any intel alternative, including intel's SDRAM chipsets. Performance wise, it beats the i845G and is dangerously close to PC1066. What does it matter if your board isn't the most stable in the world if all you're playing is 1$ pirated games?

Now, Pez, you see there is some logic behind Via. Intels expensive, Via's cheap, Videocards are expensive in Asian markets (I.E. Geforce4 Ti4600=500$) and kids are poor. Some people would rather have a Via rig that screams in Morrowind than puddle around with a Geforce4MX and their ultra stable "Intel chipset dream rig"... and in China games are a dollar a pop. Game game game!! Oh yeah!

I pesronally paid out the nose for my intel rig (256MB Rambus=70$. P4T-E with pathetic cyprus clock generator that won't let me overclock worth crap= 190$) and it isn't at all worthit. I wish I woulda gone with a Ti500 instead of a Radeon8500, but money was the limiting factor. If I had bought P4X266A, I coulda had a gaming rig with a Ti500, and enough money left over to buy atleast 50 games...

If you can convince Intel to slash their chipset costs in half, i'll tell you that no one would want a Via chipset. But until then, they'll always have a stranglehold in asian OEM and asian gamesrs hands...

 

[oldfart]

Via P4 chipsets are stable enough to put up with

Wow, that's a ringing endorsment.

People who want killer DDR333 performance, which the i845G isn't validated for.

but works just fine.....so whats the point?

The P4X333 beats all chipsets in the same arena
Performance wise, it beats the i845G

Does it? The reviews I see show it neck and neck with the 845G. I'll take stability anyways, Thank-You.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Granted there have been a few issues with VIA's southbridge + certain peripheral devices, and evidence of lowered IDE performance on burst reads...for the most part though, stability has far less to do with the chips and more to do with the installer. I would wager that the majority of the users on this forum are using VIA solutions and have few if any problems with the chipset itself.

Pabster is totally wrong about VIA having "memory configuration issues" for the P4. As Anandtech has demonstrated, the P4X333 is only beaten by RDRAM, and is the fastest DDR memory controller out there in nearly every benchmark. I'm willing to bet SiS would like to have such "configuration issues" in their chipsets as they have proven to be the most lackluster P4 chipset (performance wise).


All of this is off topic though. VIA should get a P4 license if they want to make P4 chipsets. Aquiring their "license" the way they did isn't good enough IMO.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

Wow, this turned into a chipset war pretty quick. Everyone's arguments here are kinda pointless, if ya think about it. Every chipset has it's bugs. SiS has bugs, Via has bugs, even Intel has it's issues. As for driver sets, the Intel .inf drivers are just as easy to install as 4-in-1's, which are just as easy to install as SiS's AGP drivers and whatnot.

*shrug*

As for the lawsuit.. I'm glad it's over for now. The last thing we need is a bunch of companies suing each other silly.. that hurts not only the mnufacturers, but in the end, it can affect the consumers out there.

 

[BD231]

Intel was stupid to say anything about infringement.

 

[Wingznut]

I'm not getting sucked into an argument with you, Fishtank. If you believe that sacrificing stability for cost is a good idea... More power to ya!

Sorry, man... I must've hit a sore spot.

 

[cmdrdredd]

the intel bpards are very stable overclocked too. this is something to consider. Abit makes one hell of a 845E mobo. Also they are inexpensive solutions too. PC2700 DDR works in them. I don't know why it's not listed as a supported type.

 

[FishTankX]

Well, Pez, it's not that i'm an ardorant defender of Intel. But let me ask you a better question. Wingznut, this question is for you.

(See if you can recognize who's who in this argument, Pez. All of these arguments are just representations of your argument.)
Who in their right mind would buy an ATi videocard? Sub par performance, compared to Nvidia atleast... buggy drivers, inferior [3d, ever seen their anistropic filtering compared to Nvidia? INSANE!!] image quality, inferior support... I mean, who in their right mind, would buy an ATi videocard? Do you own an ATi videocard, Wingnutz? Nvidia never has issues...


Some people just prefer Nvidia's flawless Driver record over ATi's buggy pile of steaming driver mess, right? When I bought my Radeon8500, installed the drivers from the CD, it was a mess! More bug's than are lurking in Via's southbridge! Heh... If you ever hear of a driver issue with Nvidia, it's either fixed in 2 minutes or related to DirectX. ATi on the other hand, neglects the gamer.

(Can you guess who's Intel and who's Via?)

Who would buy AMD's Hot, fragile, and recently, non-top-of-the-line CPU's? Intel's CPU's are cooler, overclockable, faster... I mean, who's stupid enough to buy an AthlonXP 2100+ when they could just pick up a 2.4B Pentium4? The Athlon looses hands down! It's hot, it's dangerously easy to break, it's got problems with heat sink instillation, it's loud... who wants an Athlon anyways?! Intel all the way, for all of us! Right?

(Can you guess who's Intel and who's Via?)

The answer to all of this, Pez, lies in this. Try to refute any of these points, I dare ya! I'll give ya a cookie if you do.

1. Via is cheap.
2. Via has incredible driver support
3. Via was the first company to offer an alternative to the dead end 100MHZ QDR bus that intel originally used and offered 133MHZ FSB support before intel.
4. Via, with a little patience and work, can be made to be 80% as stable as intel, definatley enough for home use and more than enough for gaming.
5. Via is never standing still for long, and is always trying to bump the performance bar, while Intel concentrates on having a rock solid 100% bug free alternative before putting it out. To the work station user, this is gold. To the gamer? Who cares! Give me frames!

I'm waiting for a reply.

 

[NFS4]

I will say this. In the past month at work, I have built/installed about 20 Pentium 4 machines (1.6 and 1.8GHz) all running on VIA SPD motherboards (P4X266A) with integrated NIC and Audio and running between 256MB and 1GB PC2100 DDR SDRAM using Radeon VE video cards. Each was using the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers and running either Windows 98SE or Windows 2000.

Never had a single problem with either of the systems or a single customer complaint. They systems are fast as hell and have no lockup problems or PCI/Memory configuration problems.

I'd like to see someone give me some real world knocks against VIA's P4 chipsets b/c right now, I'm not seeing it.

 

[Gstanfor]

Well, Intel may have won a battle with VIA, but it has yet to win the war. I know what my next move would be were I VIA:

S3 to go after Intel next?

The chief patent in question lays out an efficient method for designing a microprocessor that can read both Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) instructions, and Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC) instructions, according to Richard Belgard, a patent consultant associated with MicroDesign Resources. With this patent, a chipmaker could produce a processor that could understand programs written for a variety of processors. Two other patents relate to similar issues.

Intel's Merced chip employs a similar design to what is described in the Exponential-S3 patent, said Belgard. The Exponential-S3 patents, however, pre-date Intel's Merced's designs, which lays the basis for a claim. In patent law, a patent holder does not have to show that another party copied or deliberately infringed a design. They only need to show priority in time.

Intel's interest in the Exponential patents, and the potential leverage the patents gave S3, has been known for a while. Intel bid on the patents when Exponential auctioned them off earlier this year. S3 won the auction with a bid of close to $10 million. Digital, which was locked in a heated legal battle with Intel at the time, also submitted bids, sources said.

The exact nature of the potential conflict, however, only came clear when Intel showed off a block diagram of Merced at the Microprocessor Forum, said Belgard. It was then that the similarities between the Intel design and the Exponential patents, in his mind, became tangible.

"When I saw that, I almost fell off my chair," he said.

Neither S3 or Intel could be reached for comment. Other sources, however, have said that the two companies have been negotiating behind the scenes on the issue.

What would be worse for intel in the long run - the cost of allowing VIA a P4 licence, or the cost of royalties (or even being forced to redesign merced) because of the S3 patent?

I can assure you that VIA had more than integrated graphics in mind when they acquired S3, and unlike contracts/agreements Patents and IP do transfer to the purchasing company.

I would be very happy indeed for VIA to obtain a proper P4 licence, regardless of the merits of their chipset - it would hopefully give them something to think about other than AMD chipsets - a place I'd rather they were not, especially with the upcoming launch of hammer.

Greg

 

[CrazySaint]

Originally posted by: NFS4
I will say this. In the past month at work, I have built/installed about 20 Pentium 4 machines (1.6 and 1.8GHz) all running on VIA SPD motherboards (KT266A) with integrated NIC and Audio and running between 256MB and 1GB PC2100 DDR SDRAM using Radeon VE video cards. Each was using the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers and running either Windows 98SE or Windows 2000.

Never had a single problem with either of the systems or a single customer complaint. They systems are fast as hell and have no lockup problems or PCI/Memory configuration problems.

I'd like to see someone give me some real world knocks against VIA's P4 chipsets b/c right now, I'm not seeing it.

You built 20 machines with P4s running on VIA KT266A chipsets? :Q Now THAT is something I'd like to see!

 

[FishTankX]

Originally posted by: Wingznut PEZ
Yahoo News

Intel sued Via in England last September, alleging that the company infringed its patents by selling Pentium 4-compatible chipsets without a license. In a countersuit filed last December, Via claimed that Intel broke European competition laws by refusing to grant it a license to use Pentium 4 technology in its chipsets.

Via argued that Intel's infringement lawsuit was an attempt to force it to accept an unfavorable Pentium 4 license. Via also claimed that Intel's refusal to grant a license was an abuse of its dominant market position.

The court decided against Via on the grounds that Intel's refusing to grant the license was not a life-or-death matter for Via. A refusal to grant a license would not in itself be an abuse of Intel's position, the court said, unless the refusal created such exceptional circumstances as the "complete elimination of all competition within the relevant market," according to a case report by the British law firm Masons.

This was not the case in the current situation, the court said, since several other companies continue to compete with Intel in the Pentium 4 chipset market.

IMHO... With all of the other exceptional P4 chipsets out there, who in their right mind would buy a Via chipset for their P4, anyway?

And to you, Pez, one more thing to say. The sore spot is like this. By saying that, you insulted all of the people who chose Via for their P4. How many people wanted a P4X266 for their P4 when RAMBUS was hella expensive, i845 performance bit, hard... and all of that sorta stuff?

 

[Degenerate]

1. Via is cheap.
2. Via has incredible driver support
3. Via was the first company to offer an alternative to the dead end 100MHZ QDR bus that intel originally used and offered 133MHZ FSB support before intel.
4. Via, with a little patience and work, can be made to be 80% as stable as intel, definatley enough for home use and more than enough for gaming.
5. Via is never standing still for long, and is always trying to bump the performance bar, while Intel concentrates on having a rock solid 100% bug free alternative before putting it out. To the work station user, this is gold. To the gamer? Who cares! Give me frames!

I'm waiting for a reply.

Intel / VIA ia about the same price in Taiwan.
For that extra stability, the extra money, if any, is well worth it to any gamer.
I think the question of which come to perfomance and stability.

 

[oldfart]

1. Via is cheap.

Cheap is one thing. Good is another

2. Via has incredible driver support

VIA has an endless stream of 4 in 1 patches to fix bugs

4. Via, with a little patience and work, can be made to be 80% as stable as intel, definatley enough for home use and more than enough for gaming.

LOL You've got to be kidding. That statement does not help your "cause". Even a well known VIA basher such as myself would not rate them THAT bad 80% as stable as Intel with patience and work??? Now why in the world would anyone want that?

5. Via is never standing still for long, and is always trying to bump the performance bar, while Intel concentrates on having a rock solid 100% bug free alternative before putting it out. To the work station user, this is gold. To the gamer? Who cares! Give me frames!

Rock solid 100% bug free works fine for me.

 

[NFS4]

You built 20 machines with P4s running on VIA KT266A chipsets? Now THAT is something I'd like to see!

You all knew what I meant, P4X266A The other systems I've built have been SiS730 based machines...they've been a bit more finicky at times.