do you hate via and why?

[moosey]

I've seen in some posts that people complain they don't like via. I've been with intel and their chipsets and sont have much experience here. what's the overall opinion and what are the complaints?

 

[AA0]

I have no problem with VIA, they are not any worse then other chipsets. People just want someone to pick on for the most part. VIA chipsets do have bugs, but are rarely large, and only effect small %ages of people. They do address and fix the bugs too.
People like to blame SB Live problems solely on VIA, when many chipsets had very similar issues. But VIA gets the blame, never does Creative take any blame for their extremely poor products. Even the nvidia infinite loop problem, people are trying to blame it on a VIA chipset, when it happens on all chipsets.

When the ALi chipset came out, there were massive issues with it, but nobody complains. When the SiS ECS board came out, there were even more issues with it, but nobody complained. The people that hate VIA are biased, and do not keep an open mind. Especially pabster, he lies outright to make them look bad.

 

[Lithium381]

<< I have no problem with VIA, they are not any worse then other chipsets. People just want someone to pick on for the most part. VIA chipsets do have bugs, but are rarely large, and only effect small %ages of people. They do address and fix the bugs too.
People like to blame SB Live problems solely on VIA, when many chipsets had very similar issues. But VIA gets the blame, never does Creative take any blame for their extremely poor products. Even the nvidia infinite loop problem, people are trying to blame it on a VIA chipset, when it happens on all chipsets.

When the ALi chipset came out, there were massive issues with it, but nobody complains. When the SiS ECS board came out, there were even more issues with it, but nobody complained. The people that hate VIA are biased, and do not keep an open mind. Especially pabster, he lies outright to make them look bad. >>



yeah, i have a via right now, and i'm having issues with my SBlive...but i think it's my sb...not my chipset....via's been good to me anyways...

 

[Mem]

I`ve had SiS,Intel and now two VIA boards and to be honest both my VIA boards have the same stability both in gaming and general use as I had on my Intel and SiS boards,anyway I`ve never had any problems with USB or soundcards (SB Live)etc with VIA boards,my view on stability is quite simple I look for a quality brand board which has had good reviews from various sites and is good value for money and meets my requirements etc rather then the chipset in question .

Remember no board or chipset is perfect if there was we would`nt need Bios updates.

 

[MrBumpy]

Every DDR Athlon chipset has its issues. Some more than others, I guess. I guess your purchase decision depends on what problems might affect you or not. For example, VIA chipsets have receieved a lot of flack for alleged quirky PCI performance. A hardware site not too long ago did research and indeed did confirm this, also mentioning that Intel, SiS and ALi chipsets did not suffer from the same problems. I do not have the link handy, sorry...

Anyway, all I know is, a couple of years ago I went through two VIA MVP3-based motherboards that caused my Sound Blaster Live! audio to crackle when using EAX effects. When I replaced the motherboard with one based on the ALi Aladdin V chipset, the sound was perfect. The sound was also perfect on the SiS board I tested at the time (PCCHIPS M571). Is this a chipset issue? Well, since the only thing that changed in my system was the motherboard and appropriate drivers, it's easy to lean that way. Some might be tempted to accuse me of user error, and they might be right. But, I tweaked every BIOS option, updated the drivers and even reinstalled Windows 98 SE... nothing would make the crackling go away except for getting rid of the VIA board. The second VIA board passed from person to person, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. On my Dad's computer, it caused his 3D-Revelator 3D glasses to go out of sync. On my sister's computer, it caused her audio to crackle and her first network card was incompatible with it (hard freeze). Slipping an ALi board in her system solved all of those problems.

This of course doesn't mean that ALi boards are perfect either. I had to run my TNT2 card in AGP 1X mode to avoid system lockups. However, since music production was more important to me, I thought I could sacrifice a little gaming speed (hardly noticeable, BTW) for perfect sound.

When my Dad got a VIA KX133 board, I noticed that the stability issue seemed better than the MVP3 board, but under intense graphical activity, I could still hear EAX occasionally crackle. I decided to avoid VIA boards at that point, and that was before I even began reading about the infamous 686B southbridge bug, not to mention the PCI performance issues.

Of course, then there's SiS, which seems to be doing fine with their SiS 735 chipset. It's unfortunate that the flagship product for this fine chipset is the sometimes flakey ECS K7S5A. The board itself has issues, which unfortunately the SiS chipset sometimes gets blamed for. One thing that might be the SiS chipset's fault is the fact that running certain PCI graphics cards on this motherboard will cause the audio to break up and crackle (even with the onboard audio). Now I have to find my Fianc&eacute;e an AGP graphics card...

nVidia nForce I cannot comment on, since I have not cared to research it much, nor the AMD chipsets.

The original version of the ALi MAGiK 1 chipset was plagued by low performance, and I think ALi will have a hard time erasing this image, even though the new C-revision performs so much better. Although the ALi chipset works great with audio cards and nVidia graphics cards, there are some people having issues with certain video capture cards, and some Radeon users have complained about graphics corruption, but this only seems to be while overclocking. The latest AGP driver from ALi claims to help solve compatibility issues with many TV-tuner and capture cards, and not many people post problems with these boards anymore, so maybe it's fixed. Who knows... Overall, though, this chipset would be my primary choice. I have read many appraisals of this chipset for its stability, which is what I value above all in a system. Plus the fact that it's guaranteed to work with my sound cards is a nice plus

 

[Nothinman]

VIA has major problems with DMA, so far that it has been known to cause data loss if not worked around (this is what the 4-in-1s do on Windows).

 

[Boonesmi]

almost every board ive used in the last 2 years has had a via chipset

yeah yeah, everyone rips on via, but i like their stuff

 

[AA0]

Weird, since the Aladin V chipset is known to be a very bad crackling chipset for Live! cards. Many intel chipsets also do that. I haven't heard of SiS chipsets, but they really haven't been around for a while.

 

[KGB1]

Ohh YES!! The good old VIA bashing time has begun.... but this time I throw in the towel. I had a Ali Aladdin 5 my AGP card (TnT2) didnt work, I still have it but cannot use it. I have an Apollo Pro Chipset and i820 with 600Mhz and 733 P3 CPU's. I admit the 820 is faster, but the VIA keeps up with it, and is usually stable, and I use a Conexant Riptide PCI sound card. The VIA is my MAIN PC, I keep it running for days, when I'm asleep, when I'm off at school, the PC wakes and up and its really just fine. I really dont have complaints, exception of the facts that YES PCI is slower than Intel, but ALi and SiS is NO Better, and IDE interface is much slower that Intel's. But if you would make me choose over a VIA Versus both ALi/SiS; I'd take the VIA!!

Overall experience with VIA chipsets 8 out of 10!!!

 

[Z24]

I don't really have anything against Via--I would probably buy motherboards based on their chipsets in the future. HOWEVER, I have had more trouble with their boards than Intel boards.

In my experience, Intel-based motherboards work "out of the box", where Via motherboards always take some tweaking. This is fine if you are a computer enthusiast and have time to spend tinkering but this isn't the best for everyone.

I said I would probably buy Via-based motherboards in the future. While that is true, I'm not touching anything with a 686B again. The infamous "686B bug" has caused me all sorts of grief. I know there are fixes for it, but what works for one system, doesn't necessarily work for another. I spent two days trying to get an Athlon system from BSOD'ing when doing large file transfers from one HD to another.

Me personally, my last motherboards have been Asus P2L-S (Intel), P2B (Intel), P3V4X (Via), CUSL2 (Intel) and P4B266 (Intel). Of all those motherboards, the only one that gave me any problems was the P3V4X (for starters, the first one was DOA).

So, I guess to be perfectly honest, Via would have to offer some significant price or performance gains for me to use them in my own machine. I don't mind tweaking, but I hate hassles. This is especially true when I build systems for other people (which I rarely charge for).

Well, that's about it for now.

 

[Priit]

I have had most of the VIA chipsets and I have no bigger complains so far. No stability issues, compabiliy hasn't been problem either.

 

[etrin]

I could list a lot of small things I hate about VIA.
BUT my biggest problem with them seems to have spread to all the manufactures who have
done business with them. I call it the VIA virus.
BUY OUR NEW BOARD. damn its fast, good, got all the features.
NO SUPPORT AT ALL.
why you need to by the new A model of that board.
buy the A
NO SUPPORT
you need the new and improved model boards, why would you still have that pos.
AND ON AND ON AND ON

yep a little yelling there.
it seems that everyone now says why do you need a fix or a bios just buy the new one.
You can't get this or that to work. buy a new board. FIX IT NO WAY
We are working on a new one.

And since VIA has made a lot of money with their customer be screwed attitude I see it more
and more with other co's as well..

Well that is why I hate VIA
NO support for what you have, throw it in the junk pile and buy our new one.

 

[SoundBoy]

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/index.html



Everyone says how fast via is to fix stuff, but my perception is they just throw out a lot of updates/fixes that don't really fix things. This bug has been around since kt133 and they are just now getting a fix in feb 2002? [*]Text
Text

 

[Iron Woode]

I think AA0 and KGB are correct and Mr Bumpy is being over-zealous.

The ALI V super 7 chipset was the worst piece of crap that I ever had the misfortune of working on. I have never had any SB Live! problems with my MVP3 board. Of course if you buy a substandard board you will have problems. Or if you are intent on blaming VIA for your software problems, then this will cloud any reasonable thought. But to insist that all VIA chipsets are garbage is just foolish nonsense.

SIS 735 chipsets have their problems too. Intel chipsets as well.

In fact all chipsets have their issues but people forget that some board makers cut corners and make a crappy board and who do we blame? Yup, the chipset.

Get over it.

 

[AA0]

since when is lower performance a bug? its a performance issue.

this is the problem, every little thing that comes up is some massive bug that just can't be lived with, when it doesn't even effect most people, and they did not noticed it until they looked for it.

 

[Elledan]

How are the VIA KT266, KT266A and KT333 chipsets compared to previous chipsets?

 

[Boonesmi]

kinda early to say much about the kt333 except that the performance is a bit higher then the kt266a chipset, even when they both are using pc2100 ram

the kt266 had pretty low performance, but the kt266a is a great chipset in my opinion... and since the kt333 is actually very similar with just a few improvements it should kick butt too

 

[Elledan]

Thank you, Boonesmi

No reports regarding bugs etc. in these chipsets?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

It's all good, use the 6Ps or in other words, do your research on the product you wish to purchase, use quality PSU, RAM, CPU&Case cooling, ect... and any of the newer chipsets from Via, SiS, AMD, Intel, ALI or Nvidia will perform well and be as stable as the O.S., Apps, ect... your running.

 

[Damascus]

I haven't had any problems with VIA. The KT133A on my main rig has held up very well.
About the quirky PCI performance, that happens on Intel chipsets too. I think it was
on the i845 and i850.

 

[ssanches]

<< almost every board ive used in the last 2 years has had a via chipset

yeah yeah, everyone rips on via, but i like their stuff >>



I've used VIA since their VIA VPX chipset for socket-7 systems It performed on par with the Intel 430 series, but introduced UDMA 33 and USB almost 6 months earlier. It had good overclocking with a 75MHz asynchronous bus. And I've used VIA ever since. All chipset manufacturers have issues, so does VIA, but that alone does not mean we should hate them or bash their products.

 

[levarcapricorn]

via is good
ive used two mobos with via chipsets.
had some crackling problems with sound blaster live value and the mvp3, pci latency patch fixed it right up, sets the pci latency to 0.
no problems at all with the sb live value with the kt133a chipset, at least 4 me.
via and AMD rock. Intel boo.

 

[daveshel]

I have had great success with VIA, but I generally avoid using their first release onf any chip set.

 

[MrBumpy]

<< Weird, since the Aladin V chipset is known to be a very bad crackling chipset for Live! cards. Many intel chipsets also do that. I haven't heard of SiS chipsets, but they really haven't been around for a while. >>


There is more than one thing that can cause crackling with the SB-Live!. One problem is the WDM drivers, which cause problems on some systems no matter what chipset is used. Then there is a VIA specific crackling that is related to the onboard PCI controller and/or sometimes the graphics card. Using the VXD drivers, the only crackling seems to occur on VIA chipsets, although there are a few exceptions due to certain hardware configurations. Reducing the PCI latency timer on VIA chipsets usually solves this issue. Unfortunately, I was unable to find this option in the BIOS of my Soyo 5EMA+ motherboard. The reason I bought the ALi board was because I read the Sound Blaster Live! newsgroup on the Creative servers, and nobody was having troubles with the ALi board. On the other hand, VIA complaints were filling up the servers.

 

[Gene396]

First; VIA is a marketing firm, first, last and forever!! They want to sell you a new chip set every 3 months. On another thread, I said this and will say it again; They throw out a new product without complete testing. About 3 months later they fix the problems and lable the new product "A." They have maintaned sales and had time to "get it right."

You are given the responsiblity of doing the testing with all the flustrations of lost time and money. Based on your responces; they fix their problems. If you use AMD CPUs; there is really no choice except VIA.

So, always wait till they come out with the "A" version!!

Gene