I'm torn. AMD fan, going to Intel. I need some answers.

[Valinos]

I've been going the AMD route for a couple years now, and every time I pair an AMD chip with a VIA chipset, something ALWAYS goes wrong. It may not be huge, but there is always one thing wrong. I've always gone with VIA for performance, but I'm sick of getting crashes, errors, hardware compatibility problems, etc. The only other Socket A chipset I've used has been the SiS735 and it worked flawlessly.

Well, after having my third VIA board that sucked (this one being the SOYO Dragon Plus!) I'm thinking about going to an Intel platform on my next system in about six months.
I admit I haven't tried the AMD chipsets, and I'm just plain scared to use ALi's crap. I don't like Intel's prices and I hate Rambus almost as much as AOL/Time Warner, but I need some frickin stability for once. Something I can leave on for a month without a problem. Something that doesn't have any compatiblity problems with any common hardware that's come out in the past 3 years.

I've frequented the AT forums for a long time now and I'd have to say that AMD/VIA have had the most posts regarding problems in some form or fashion. This post isn't meant to start a flame war, but I need some no BS advice. I don't need Intel and AMD zealots. I just want straight-up non-biased answers. How many other people have problems with AMD and VIA? I've read flame wars between people saying that VIA is more stable than Intel, but I honestly don't believe this. Then again, I haven't built an Intel machine since the Celeron 300A.

This was originally going to be a post asking what Intel P4 chipset was better for the long run and more stable yet still had good performance. i850, i845D, SiS DDR333, or VIA P4X266. My thoughts wandered and this came out.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Well, if you want max stability, go with i850 or i845-D. The SiS635/645 would rank second, and I'd just avoid VIA's P4X266A.

The fastest P4 chipset is still i850 with RDRAM, but i845-D is only 0-5% slower in all cases but the memory benchmark. I'd look at i850 boards from ASUS and Abit and i845-D boards from ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI, then compare RDRAM and DDR RAM prices, and make my decision on which combination is cheapest.

If you want a no-frills motherboard (no RAID, LAN, USB2, etc), I'd look at these combinations:

Abit TH7II (i850): $148
2 x Kingston 256MB PC800 RDRAM: $176
Total: $324

Gigabyte GA-8IRX (i845-D): $128
2 x Crucial 256MB PC2100 DDR: $160 (not including the 15% Anandtech discount)
Total: $288 ($264 with the discount)

Note: All prices from Newegg.com

I personally bought the ASUS P4B266, one 512MB DIMM of Crucial PC2100 DDR, and an Intel P4 2.0A. It's been running constantly with no crashes for 300 hours now

 

[rockhard]

I felt the same way as you till recently as i lept the Via camp getting a ECS K7S5A which has been superb.
I handed this down to my dad last month and was looking for my next rig which was going to be Intel.
The price put me off so i plucked up the courage to do one last try with Via before going over to the dark side
Anyways, i chose my bits carefully - XP1600+, PAL 8045, Panaflo 80mm fans everywhere, Gigabyte GA7VTXH (F4 Bios), 2x 512mb Crucial PC2100 ECC unregistered dimms, Herc GF2 ti, TB Santa Cruz, Plex Burner, Antec 350 Watt PSU, APC UPS, Adaptec 19160, Maxtor Atlas III 10k, Maxtor D740X.
This rig is the epitome of stability, Suspend to RAM works flawlessly, fast, a great workhorse that i doubt any Intel rig could do better and certainly not as cost effective.
I never shut the rig down, just STR knowing the UPS will shut me down if we get a power cut
Also overclocking goes out the Window - If my rigs going to be the above why risk it for a few fps.
If you pick your parts sensibly with prior research i am sure you could do the same without going Intel and raiding your wallet.

rockhard =)

P.S. now only use WHQL or latest official drivers and dont fiddle with my rigs no more like us enthusiasts like to do and now never have anything to complain about

 

[WTT0001]

Well, I really don't know much but it seems like one of the true intel chipsets might be the best stability wise. Based on what I have seen I would go for the i845D.

Good luck in your search,

WTT0001

 

[AGodspeed]

If you're scared of ALi and VIA, then what about SiS? You just said the K7S5A worked flawlessly for you.

IMO, if you want to stay with Socket A, I'd look into the 415-D nForce boards coming out in the next week or so. My own 420-D nForce board (back at home) hasn't acted up once. It's worked perfectly under WinXP and I'm just plain delighted with the system. There was a very minor memory issue with this board, but a BIOS update from a few weeks ago corrected that (the issue never affected me though). Also, nVidia's Unified nForce Driver Architecture has been out for about a month or so now.

If you wanna go Intel, I'd get the ASUS P4B266. I'd get the P4T-E if you wanna go with Rambus memory. I'd also suggest either a 1.8GHz Northwood (cheap and overclocks like a mofo) or a 2.0GHz Northwood (ok price, overclocks like a mofo).

Good luck.

 

[DSTA]

IMO, if you are going to build in 6 months, asking the question is kinda pointless now (no offence meant). It's fun playing "what ifs" though, and I'm more or less in the same boat end of the year (coming from an i815 then).

I'll just take a look at how the Ali*, AMD, Nvidia and SiS chipsets available then perform in real life. Plenty of time to see potential bugs surface. What can't be said now is how the price/performance of a mobo/ram/cpu combo will look like in half a year.

* from my limited experience their current stuff is pretty good WRT compatibility, just effing slow if it's the older revision chipset for K7/DDR, or in general if it's for P3.

 

[Valinos]

Well, I usually stay behind the curve for about 6 months....I can't afford the newest latest stuff. Although this Soyo Dragon Plus! is about the best thing you can get for the Athlon according to every review I've read, but I've had nothing but problems. I got one and had to RMA it because it constantly crashed. It was a defective motherboard, but now I can't use dual monitors and my system locks up at the shutdown screen with Windows XP, although Win2k (which after 6 months of problems with WinXP Pro I've switched back to 2k) has no problems shutting down. I still can't use dual monitors with my Fire GL 1000 like I could with my old Asus A7V motherboard. Even then, I still had stability issues the whole time I had it. I admit I overclock, but these problems surface well before I even try to OC anything. Right now I'm at 1320 from 1200 @ 34 C, but I left it at 1200 for a week, and still had these problems.

I don't know what the problem is, but I never had one single problem from my Celeron a couple years back, and I've had constant issues since I've gone with AMD. Little ones, big ones. There's always something.

Woe is me.

 

[RazeOrc]

I have no experience with the i845D boards and will not pretend to know, however I have delt with 3 i850 boxes and here's what I can tell you:

-While hatred of Rambus abounds, RDram prices fall and offer the best performance at virtually the same prices as DDR. I reccomend Samsung RDram as I have owned both it and NEC and the NEC was junk, Samsung is relativley cool (heh, RDram cool yeah right) overclocks well, and is the cheapest name brand you can buy with a lifetime warranty.

-i850 is the most stable computer chipset I have ever run of all intel chipsets from most every chip (x386, x486, pentium, pentium mmx, pentium II, pentium III, and now pentium IV (423 & 478 (Northwood and Willamette)).

-You will not need a new HSF or worry about heat because the retail HSF works great

-Overclocking i850 can yeild ungodly memory bandwidth if the ram can handle it, if not then you can decrease the ram speed and overclock, using a PCI divider you basically do the same thing as change the processor multiplier without affecting the rest of your system (because as you overclock memory speeds catch back up with the stock 400MHz FSB)

-Burning at 24x, listening to winamp, running multiple browsers, watching a divx movie and the system just keeps going, the only thing you get limited on eventually is processor speed, never mem bandwidth cause it just keeps going.

-INSTALLATION IS THE MOST PAINLESS THING EVER, all you need is (in this order)

1) OS
2) The INF drivers from Intel
3) The ATA storage drivers
4) RAID drivers (for onboard raid)
5+ Everything else

oh and did I mention it's painless, very painless, had mine up and done and 100% where I wanted it from scratch in 2 1/2 hours and I had never built one before

-Ensure you pick up a socket 478 board that supports Northwoods (may require a BIOS flash)

-Sit back and relax, your system won't crash, add a side case fan blowing on processor and ram and you're almost guaranteed

-Oh yeah, run SETI, P4s own on it.

Enjoy and I hope this helps

 

[Amused]

<< INSTALLATION IS THE MOST PAINLESS THING EVER, all you need is (in this order)

1) OS
2) The INF drivers from Intel
3) The ATA storage drivers
4) RAID drivers (for onboard raid)
5+ Everything else >>




I have an Asus P4T-E running XP. All I did was load the OS, and find a RAID driver that worked. XP's native HPT drivers did not work well with my Iwill SideRAID 100 (HPT 370) Nor did Highpoint's. Only Iwill's latest drivers worked well).

I never loaded any INF drivers from Intel, or ATA drivers and I'm doing great. Fast and stable as can be.

Maybe XP just has these native?

 

[Diable]

I had a all AMD machine(900mhz Slot A Tbird/MSI K7Pro motherboard)that was perfect, no blue screens or crashes ever. I then built a 1.4GHz Tbird system using a MSI K7T Turbo R and I had nothing but stablity problems with it. I swapped out the motherboard for a ESC K7S5A and 4 of thoses boards later I sold the Tbird and built a 1.9GHz(overclocked 1.5GHz)P4 system using a Asus P4T-E and this system has been just as stable and perfect as my old all AMD system.

If you want stablity a i850/i845D motherboard and a Northwood would make a good base for a new system.

 

[killmeplease]

When people talk about stability, I'm not sure that a complete change will even do the trick. I'd ask around about complete listings of systems and see what the individual experiences yield.

I've had problems with Intel and AMD solutions, but my current main system is a rock. No crashes. NONE! Not once during install of anything (software or hardware). I've installed old games, drivers that I "guessed" at, etc. A rock.

 

[Pabster]

Ah, another devotee lost to the perils of shoddy VIA core logic

Can't blame ya. Only thing I'll say is consider SiS 735/745 before going head over heels for a new platform. VIA is suck, I agree totally.

 

[Amused]

I've never gone with an AMD processor, BUT... I've used a Via Apollo Pro/Abit VP6 dual PIII mobo before, and I agree with Valinos, there's always SOMETHING wrong. I could never get it perfect. It's currently being used as a life support system for file storage in my brother's server closet now. That's about all it can do right, because it would crash with every other game, and a number of other problems.

That was my first, and last exerience with Via.

BTW, the 850i is as stable as my old BX. I LOVE it. You can't phase this thing.

 

[killmeplease]

<< Ah, another devotee lost to the perils of shoddy VIA core logic

Can't blame ya. Only thing I'll say is consider SiS 735/745 before going head over heels for a new platform. VIA is suck, I agree totally. >>



Ahhhh. The first shot fired. It's funny that an Intel fan would be the first. But there you go.

Edit: Maybe I'm making an assumption about the Intel fan part.

 

[Athlon4all]

That's fine if you don't want VIA, ALi or AMD. But anyway, I have next to no experience (I've used 3 PC's in the past 7 years a Intel Pentium 75, a AMD K6-2 475, and a Duron 850 (my current rig) but from my experiences with AMD, my K6-2 sucked big time. I had nothing but trouble with it, and it was an ALi Aladdin V chipset so I'm not sure I could go with them either. My current rig, is a VIA KM133, it's my first DIY and to sum it up, my experience has been great. Almost no issues at all, I just threw everything in there, installed all drivers, and went and it's been great. Prolly 1 BSOD sense April. And really I wouldn't hesitate to go (or recommend) VIA again (although I do think their end is near and nVidia and SiS will take over). I'm upgrading soon, and I have to agree with AGodSpeed. nVidia is a newbie to the chipset market, but I really (especially ever sense they released the Unified Driver Architechure) have heard nothing but good. People bash it because of the GF2MX video, but that will change with as AGodSpeed mentioned, nForce 415-D and I really, especially if u don't have a good audio card allready, look into it. 2 boards are allready on their way (Asus A7N266-C and MSi K7N415 Pro) and I would really consider them or right now MSi K7N420 Pro (Has GF2 MX video) is at $144, same price range as Dragon+. So, it's your choice, I would encourage you to consider nForce 415-D but if not fine, I will not argue that Intel chipsets are the easiest to setup, but I feel that the "incredible stability" isn't exactly true. Once setup correctly, VIA, SiS and nForce are just as "stable" as Intel chipsets IMO. But if you choose to go Intel, fine. 850 is the way to go. RDRAM and DDR are the same price and while RDRAM is only at most 10% faster than 845-D, still, 850 (especially Abit TH7II) are more future proof than 845-D. That brings me to one thing though, you speak of in 6 months you're gonna build, it's tough to say what will be here then. Here's is what's coming up for Intel this year:

533fsb Northwoods+Supporting chipsets+PC1066 RDRAM (see below)
Northwood's up to at least 2.53GHz

For AMD though it's gets much more interesting:

Thuroghbred Core, will provide clock speeds prolly up to 2GHz and should give a Pentium 4 3GHz a run for it's money
pc2700 DDR chipsets (shouldn't be factored, performance won't increase)

The other thing is that there are rumors that AMD's Hammer will be released not in Q3, but much sooner now that is all speculation, but the interesting thing about Hammer, is that while there is some confusion, Hammer features a on-die North Bridge/Memory controller, and that is something to keep in mind, but again don't get your hopes on that.

For an Intel setup, I would strongly encourage waiting for 533fsb Northwood's+850e+PC1066 RDRAM. It has been benchmarked using current 850+PC800 overclocked to PC1066 that 533fsb+PC1066 does improve performance nicely, while on 845-D will not benefit much from the fsb increase probably so I would wait for 850e for the P4, or for AMD then I would wait for nForce 415-D and take a look at it. Any questions, just ask

 

[Jen]

i have had great luck with my AMD 761 chipset . perfectly stable and very fast for me..........



Jen

 

[rockhard]

Why oh why is it that people jump on the bandwagon of saying "X" chipset is suck go "X" cos its better, more stable?
Come on guys. Theres nothig wrong with the SIS 735, Via KT266a or the Intel 845D/850 all equally stable/compatible good performing.
They all have errata its just the mobo manufacturers that need to be scrutinised more and the individual mobo's themselves
Some mobo manufacturers have a funny idea about Bios dev IMO FWIW.
Ive been really impressed with Gigabyte's GA7VTXH and find very few posts on message boards about it - is this because its turning out to be a pretty trouble free board so noone's bothering to bitch about it? Its been around a while now so cant be due to not being very widespread yeah?
So if certain KT266a boards get a hard time on message boards am i to deduce that my GA7VTXH is inferior to the Intel god?
IMO no, as its the mobo model/make, not the chipset at fault, though YMMV
To say that Intel is head and shoulders above the rest is a bit premature IMO, the Via PCI latency probs were soon followed up by an Intel incarnation

Heh, I must be getting old before my time, but im getting kind of tired of this, especially when i have rigs all over the house with supposedly dubious quirks running no probs totally stable - hmmm?

 

[MoFunk]

Get an Epox 8k7a with the AMD 761 chipset. Solid as a rock!

 

[AA0]

I don't get it. Chipsets are not unstable, its something else. I've put together a A7V system, and seriously, if you can't get that stable... maybe you need to rethink making your own computers and getting something from someone else. The only issue I've had with my computers is ALi's incompatibility. ALi's newest revision is supposed to be fixed of bugs and they are stable.

 

[freebsddude]

I am not an 'extreme' techie, but based on the past 8 PCs that I have built I have had the worst
experience with my AMD K6 500 MHz, using a Soyo Motherboard, I believe it has a VIA chipset as well.

I have found that the Intel Chipset based MoBos have the best stability IMHO.

My recommendations would be to stick with Intel, especially the latest 2.2+ GHz P4. I am on my 5th Asus
motherboard, and the very first one I purchased 3-5 years ago, the P55T2P4 with a 233MHz Pentium is
happily running FreeBSD now.

I also hear FreeBSD folks having issues with AMD hardware, although I have personally never experienced
these issues.

So, my vote is for the rock solid Asus & P4 2.2+.

Rgds/Happiness!

 

[Jen]

for myself i put together a computer with a very good quality powersupply and try to make sure the cards dont have any irq conflicts with other cards. so far that has worked out best for me



Jen

 

[MrTux]

I have had the Asus A7M266 in my main rig since May, and it runs rock solid. I even have a SB Live! Card in there and there are no problems. The rig runs 24-7 and has only crashed a few times due to driver and PS related issues. Just my personal experience

 

[Damascus]

Valinos, just out of curiousity, what OS do you use?

 

[formulav8]

I had the Epox 8K7A. That is the best AMD board ever made IMO. Very fast, very stable, very sweet. I gave it to my wife. Me nor she ever had a crash hardware related.



Jason

 

[basic]

I see some posts asking "why do you think x is better than x"...well...
My first experience was with a via kt133...after getting everything working....it would freeze up every 40 minutes or so.
Then i got a kt133a based abit kt7a, with a duron 700...after initial no worky, i sent the board back and got a working one, its worked great since then --rock solid-- i even got it overclocked to 933mhz (133 x 7.0).
My next experience was with a kt266a, asus a7v266-e...it worked fine for....a few days, then would randomly lock up and restart, and did this for about a month before completely dying just a few days ago....my athlon xp 1800+ died with it.

My first experience with intel was the abit bh6, 440bx pII chipset. Rock solid stable, the board is still in a working machine right now with a PII 450.
My next was with a msi i815 motherboard with a celeron 566 @ 850 in it. This thing works great too, its rock solid and I can leave it on for days at a time.
My next system will be a p4 1.8A with a i845-d based abit bd7, and will be upgraded to the granite bay chipset when that is released. I prefer the stability over "performance" or whatever....i guess its just opinion.

I have had a lot better luck with the intel based motherboards/processors, even though i do like my duron @ 933mhz, this machine is slow compared to the "new" athlon xp, which had been nothing but trouble, so that is why i am going with the intel setup. I trust them a bit more...amd seems like they are advertising for the "hardcore" gamers/enthusiasts....can you even run a athlon xp 1800+ with a retail fan and no case fans without it heating up and dying?


sorry im just kind of mad I lost my processor and motherboard...but thats how companies lose their customers.