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Hardware Analysis rips into VIA's upcoming KT400 chipset...Article UPDATE posted.

NFS4

NFS4

No Lifer
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1500/


<< First of all, the industry specification just doesn't exist. And when you don?t have proper specification and standardization, you?ve got trouble. You?ve got bizarre conflicts, unstable systems, and worse. And because of that, you?ve got angry end-users who will undoubtedly want someone to blame.

The DDR266 specification has only just reached an acceptable state. DDR333 still isn?t anywhere close to being ready for mass-market. DDR400? Or is it PC3200? We don?t even know what to call it yet!

Second, even if we had proper specification, there?s no performance or costing reason to push DDR400 right now, especially on AMD platforms (the Pentium 4 might actually be able to make some use of the bandwidth). DDR333 is more expensive than RDRAM right now, with virtually no performance increase over DDR266. DDR400 can only be more expensive, and offer even less performance increase. No one?s going to buy that. Just ask the Intel 820 and Rambus.

Third, the KT333 is only a few months old! VIA is entering down a dangerous path of releasing questionable, and for all intents and purposes, incomplete chipsets, just to have something there before the ?real? chipset is ready. How many of you actually took the KT266 seriously, knowing the KT266A was coming? When you?re a business trying to promote yourself as a serious and reliable competitor, and both you and your customers know not to take half your products seriously because they?re half-baked, you?re basically shooting yourself in the foot. >>

 
Slam.



Actually, if every other chipset is half decent, this one should be good, right? 🙂

kt133-garbage, 133a-good, 266-garbage, 266a-good, 333 -?(haven't bought one yet), 400- good? 🙂
 
Sounds like a bit of petulant spouting rather than an objective opinion on the KT400. Who has Dan Mepham spoken with at VIA to justify his reasoning that VIA is trying to "introduce new memory standards on its own..." That's as assinine as the Aberdeen Group slamming AMD for their rating system only to find out that they never even spoke to AMD in an effort to understand the metric.

Not to metion that memory makers will be applauding and supporting VIA. Mem makers are loath to shift to DDR-II because it will mean a change in packaging that they will have to pay for. Micron recently announced the sampling of DDR400, and this article accurately describes the attitudes of memory makers. Far from dictating memory standards, VIA is supporting the memory makers. Not to mention that SiS has plans for DDR400, making Mr. Mephams argument a bit one-sided.

We should also mention that just because the chipset is capable of a 200Mhz FSB, that doesn't make it incompatible with older standards. Many people have been using DDR266 in the SiS 745 for months now. For over 2 years now VIA has done a good job of being on the cutting edge of technology. VIA could introduce the KT400, (which took the place of the KT333A) now and then spend the rest of the year working on Hammer and Intel chipsets.

I do agree with Mr. Mepham in that DDR400 will have a very limited use/lifespan. I also agree that using DDR400 or even DDR333 with current Athlon CPU's is not going to result in noticeable improvements over DDR266. IMO there's no reason to get newer boards (other than for USB2.0, AGP 8X etc.) until AMD increases the Athlon's FSB.
 
gregor7777, I agree with you. I remember reading that the KT400 was supposedly just the KT333A (more or less) back when word of KT333 was being announced. I think VIA just is calling their stable version of KT333 KT400 (of course, you got support for faster memory but whatever).
 
I just reread this statement from the article:


<< VIA thinks it can introduce new memory standards on its own. Arrogant. Intel thought it could too with Rambus, and look at the grief it got. And VIA doesn't have anywhere near the level of presence Intel does. >>


Didn't VIA pretty much bolster and push PC133 memory support (which Intel reluctantly adopted later) with it's Apollo Pro 133(A) chipsets?

I know that VIA isn't the GREATEST chipset maker out there, but this article makes them out to be incompetent leeches.
 
Via's "angle" has always been getting new products out there as fast as possible. Time to market is their middle name. Often their first tries are less than admirable but they've been successful with this fact-paced approach. They won't stop anytime soon.
 
NFS4 wrote:

"I know that VIA isn't the GREATEST chipset maker out there, but this article makes them out to be incompetent leeches."

Oh, man, I should stay away from this thread! 😀 😛

KT400 looks like KT333 with a new name. Kinda like KT333 is KT266A with a new name. 🙂

The fact that VIA seems to be releasing chipsets along the lines of "The Fast And The Furious" doesn't concern me half as much as the fact that each of these chipsets remains plagued with many of the same performance and stability issues which have affected VIA core logic for years. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why they don't fix what's broken.
 


<< NFS4 wrote:

"I know that VIA isn't the GREATEST chipset maker out there, but this article makes them out to be incompetent leeches."

Oh, man, I should stay away from this thread! 😀 😛

KT400 looks like KT333 with a new name. Kinda like KT333 is KT266A with a new name. 🙂

The fact that VIA seems to be releasing chipsets along the lines of "The Fast And The Furious" doesn't concern me half as much as the fact that each of these chipsets remains plagued with many of the same performance and stability issues which have affected VIA core logic for years. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why they don't fix what's broken. >>


Care to tell me what performance and stability issues that the KT266A and KT333 have?

And while we're at it, what happend to the TONS OF MANUFACTURERS that would be making SiS745 boards? So far, all I see is ECS and MSI. Everyone and their grandma is making KT333 boards🙂
 


<< kt133-garbage, 133a-good, 266-garbage, 266a-good, 333 -?(haven't bought one yet), 400- good? 🙂 >>



Oh yeah, like that 686B on the KT133a was a real joy!
 


<< I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why they don't fix what's broken. >>

There's no time. They're off working on the next next Latest and Greatest (and Flakiest?) chipset. 😉
 
VIA needs to slow their roll, I've personaly had it with them, I dont care how many people say there chipsets are fine, it just isn't so. A large factor could be that AMD chips spout out a LOT of heat, and overall just havn't been easy to work with in terms of applying a HSF. Please spare me the "I'm running a VIA chipset perfectly fine and have not had a single problem". I'm not sure how the P4 VIA chipsets are, but pairing a P4 with a VIA chipset would defeat the purpose of getting a P4 in the first place.
 


<< Slam.
kt133-garbage, 133a-good, 266-garbage, 266a-good, 333 -?(haven't bought one yet), 400- good? 🙂 >>



I love my KT133 w/ 1.1 TBird, not a single problem, very stable. Hardly garbage.
 


<< I dont care how many people say there chipsets are fine, >>

Via chipsets are perfectly fine provided you don't install and PCI cards or use any USB devices, don't push the video too hard and stick with basic applications. 🙂

Seriously my old P3V4X (133A) board was decent. I could handle the rather poor memory bandwith but the occassional garbled video on cold boots got old real quick. "Solid" is just not a word I'd use for Via products.
 
Before Pabster goes on bashing VIA 😀, I'm happy to tell you that there are not problems with VIA CHIPSETS!! Provided you know what you're doing with it. 😀
 
Via chipsets are perfectly fine provided you don't install and PCI cards or use any USB devices, don't push the video too hard and stick with basic applications.

LOL, that one put a smirk on my face. Thats the main problem with VIA, you have to sacrafice something or other to get it working right!.


Before Pabster goes on bashing VIA , I'm happy to tell you that there are not problems with VIA CHIPSETS!! Provided you know what you're doing with it.

"Please spare me the "I'm running a VIA chipset perfectly fine and have not had a single problem".

Sigh...., Pillage, you just dont get it man. You have to be one of these people ->"Man your nut's, my AMD run's at a cool 38C at full load, whats that?, how much DB's of noise dose it make?. Oh you know, like 300 or so, pretty avrage.......". I would HATE to hear what's cooling that 1.6 Athlon. The fact that so many people have had related trouble with there VIA based boards should be more than enough for anyone to see that there's a problem.


 
Bdog. You're wrong. I'm not saying that I'm happy with my AMD. I would love to go Intel if given a chance. I don't favor either side. I just bit it and went with the Tbird a year ago and kept it the way it is and have not had any problem since. 🙂 My pc is running warm and it's noisy. I would love to own a Intel machine which is much quieter.

I won't start a debate on which is more stable. The main point is, VIA chipsets are not all that bad when people knows what they're doing.

Yes, I bet you would hate to hear what's cooling it. 🙂
 
Pillage. I've always found that Via chipsets have requierd a lot of matinence, I mess with my computers alot mostly because it's a hobby and I just cant have "fun" with anything AMD has offerd. I suppose if you were to put a system together and not touch anything but the power buttun till your next upgrade, that you could live fine with a VIA based system. My battle was noise, and I most certainly dident win 🙁. Got so SOO close, but in the end frustration got the best of me. I put together a Athy system for a family member last year with the KT266 chipset and it's been running smooth ever since, in fact I'm using it right now(till my next upgrade). It is by no means quiet, and even though it dosent have a Delta in it, it still drives me nuts. I agree that if you know what your doing you can get a Via based system to run fine, but a lot of people dont know what there doing. Techies make up less than 10% of the computer market, that leaves an EXTREMELY large amount of people b*tching and moaning about how their computer wont work. How many people can honestly diagnose a Power Supply as being the culprit of instability?. Either way, if you use your computer enough, it's not to hard to justify spending alot on it. If your happy with your computer then your happy.
 
🙂

<< kt133-garbage, 133a-good, 266-garbage, 266a-good, 333 -?(haven't bought one yet), 400- good? >>



Oh yeah, like that 686B on the KT133a was a real joy!


Let me readress this: The 133 was stable, as I've found every other VIA board to be, but did not offer alot of features people would have wanted, and the two I owned and used when they first arrived benched like sh!t. The 133a allowed me to jump to 133fsb so it was at least in my book a god send and I will hear nothing else. 🙂

I bought one 266 when it first came out for someone else and quickly returned it as it performed worse than the 133a. I currently LOVE my Epox 8kha+, and have had 0 compatibility or stability issues.
 
It really doesn't bother me that but that VIA is releasing a chipset "supporting" a undefined standard. It's called overclocking, if VIA brings trouble because of OEM's, etc using "DDR400" that really isn't JDEC approved, well I would have a problem with that. Truthfully though, this in the end doeasn't really matter. DDR is reaching it's peak in performance, look at even KT266A with a 166fsb and DDR333, less than 5% increase, and if you look at the SiS 645DX Previews that feature reference boards that have DDR400 speed options, DDR400 doesn't help anywhere near it should (again less than 5% when it should be signifcantley faster than PC800 RDRAM because of it's so called "lower latency"). You wanna know why DDR isn't getting as fast as it should (with fast enough front side buses)? Latency. The Latency is increasing as speeds get higher, so, this is really all insignificant to me. The defacto standard for Athlon's and P4's alike will be DDR266 (unfortunately not PC1066 RDRAM for P4) until the end of the year. Then, we'll see which comes out on top for the P4, Dual Channel DDR, or PC1066 RDRAM.
 
You wanna know why DDR isn't getting as fast as it should (with fast enough front side buses)? Latency. The Latency is increasing as speeds get higher, so, this is really all insignificant to me

That's not exactly true. Increased bus speed only impacts latency if the CAS is adjusted upward. I see that Corsair is currently selling DDR2700 @ CAS2 so this isn't really an issue.
 
People often define stability differently. One of my friends has the KT266 (not a), which I define to be "unstable", but he thinks it is relatively stable. I really depends on how you use it. If you dont seriously use your computer for more than a couple hours a day and dont mind the random crash that comes once in a while, than just about anything is stable.

However, once you get to mission critical, stability really becomes an issue. My mark for the definition of stability is getting a box that can run 24/7 with no maintance (you turn it on, setup, and follow up with no monitor/keyboard/mouse because im a broke student) with a high traffic FTP + HTTP server running.

I think part of the problem with pushing new standards is that companies really face a PR war. Look at the first video cards (riva 128) they had no heatsinks OR fans. Now these GeForce4s have monster heatsinks and a high performance fan. Pentium Classic processors used to come with only a small passive heatsink as the standard cooling. Athlon XPs and Pentium IV's, there a heatsink/fan combos that are rated for certain amount of speed. I recently got a Pentium IV 1.6a and that heatsink/fan absolutely dwarfed the p4 itself. Before you know it arctic silver will be standard, then copper heatsink/fan, then peltiers... 😀 ... maybe not...

And btw, I dont know why when people say 'DDR' they always refer to DDR SDram. Rambus is also DDR. So when my friends ask if I have a DDR board, I say yes even if I have a Rambus board.
 
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