VIA and Creative Drivers

[olds]

2 years back I had a mobo with a VIA KT133A chipset and a Creative SB Gamer 5.1. They didn't get along well together and it was a bear to get the machine (Win98) stable. Has this problem been solved or is it still an issue? I am looking to upgrade my mobo that now has an AMD chipset but all the functions I want seem to be on the VIA boards.

 

[bgeh]

i have a VIA KT266A board and a Creative SBLive Value and i have no compatability issues whatsoever

 

[RustyNale]

Yes, the problem was solved. There was an issue with the southbridge chip, it was fixed first with a bios patch, then via came out with new chipsets to replace the southbridge that was causing the problems.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

The problem was not with the KT133a. It was the 686b southbridge that it was teamed up with. And yes, it has been fixed.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: RustyNale
Yes, the problem was solved. There was an issue with the southbridge chip, it was fixed first with a bios patch, then via came out with new chipsets to replace the southbridge that was causing the problems.

Let me (yet again) unskew the facts here. The root cause is a PCI timing violation BY THE SOUNDBLASTER CHIP. The first attempt to work around that (by programming the chipset NORTH bridge differently) then lead to data corruption on IDE, then VIA worked out an official solution to go into BIOSes and VIA's own driver set. Problem no longer exists, since about 18 months.

Just for the record, VIA's 686B south bridge is still with us, and Creative fixed their PCI problem in the 5.1 series. btw, SiS chipsets also are freaking out often enough when presented with an original SB!Live card.

regards, Peter

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Hey Peter, What about SBLive! and Intel 82801 Southbridges..Any known bugs there?

 

[Easy1]

Originally posted by: Peter
Just for the record, VIA's 686B south bridge is still with us, and Creative fixed their PCI problem in the 5.1 series. btw, SiS chipsets also are freaking out often enough when presented with an original SB!Live card.

Really? Which SiS chipsets have issues? I was considering a board which uses the 735 system chipset.

 

[Peter]

Listen. Listen. Listen. THE BUG IS IN THE ORIGINAL SB!LIVE. Not in the SiS nor the VIA chipsets.

Official Creative position on this topic was "We test on Intel chipsets. Buy those or pray."

 

[Easy1]

Originally posted by: Peter
Listen. Listen. Listen. THE BUG IS IN THE ORIGINAL SB!LIVE. Not in the SiS nor the VIA chipsets. Official Creative position on this topic was "We test on Intel chipsets. Buy those or pray."

Yeah, I got it the first time. The fact remains that I own a SBLive card which I intend to reuse on a budget machine. I would like to upgrade this box with a SiS 735 chipset board. It may not be fair to SiS but I won't intentionally shoot myself in the foot, so the question still stands. Is this chipset compatable with original SBLive or not? If you don't know or don't wish to say then no problem. I also understand the Creative Labs position. Very brave of them to alienate so many people. My position is that Creative can bite me. I used the onboard audio on the nforce2 box I just built and I'm quite satisfied. I don't anticipate any need to purchase Creative Labs products in the future.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Easy1

Originally posted by: Peter
Listen. Listen. Listen. THE BUG IS IN THE ORIGINAL SB!LIVE. Not in the SiS nor the VIA chipsets. Official Creative position on this topic was "We test on Intel chipsets. Buy those or pray."

Yeah, I got it the first time. The fact remains that I own a SBLive card which I intend to reuse on a budget machine. I would like to upgrade this box with a SiS 735 chipset board. It may not be fair to SiS but I won't intentionally shoot myself in the foot, so the question still stands. Is this chipset compatable with original SBLive or not? If you don't know or don't wish to say then no problem. I also understand the Creative Labs position. Very brave of them to alienate so many people. My position is that Creative can bite me. I used the onboard audio on the nforce2 box I just built and I'm quite satisfied. I don't anticipate any need to purchase Creative Labs products in the future.

I had SB Live! Value ver2.0 and used it on many VIA and SIS boards and never had any issues. I used a SB Live! Value ver 1.0 on VIA and SIS boards and never had any problems. I am not saying that you will never have a problem, but lets not blow this problem out of proportion.

You can buy a brand new SB Live!5.1 OEM for less than $35.00 US. It will work great and its not expensive. You will notice very little, if any, difference between this and an Audigy.