VIA did us over 4 times

[Regalk]

4 strikes and you're in??? Looks like we like being guinea pigs for the far eastern guys and they sure are having one big laugh on us
Aollo 133 to 133A (133 was crap)
Buggy KT133 to KT133A
686A to buggy 686B
Lousy KT266 to KT266A??
How many more times are we going to put up with this?
Thank heavens I waited this time round and am goin to wait until the nforce comes out in order to have a real comparison.
ANd to the reviewers (incl. Anandtech) plz do your reviews thoroughly this time round and none of that cut and pasting $hit from previous reviews..
Enuff said.

 

[TuffGuy]

guy, wtf are you talking about? EXAMPLES? i've had an abit kt7, an iwill kk266 and an epox 8k7a that ALL ran flawlessly.

 

[gogeeta13]

What are you smoking?

 

[Citadel535]

I am very happy with my A7V133 and I do have a SBLive card in it too!

 

[cheric4]

I gave Newegg 45.00 bucks for a refur Abit KT7 a month ago and very happy with it.........Wish it had the 133 fsb but for the price i could live with it. OC is no longer an obsession for me.........

 

[shawnman]

I agree with Regalk. It is time for Via to stop rushing their products to market, finding a few flaws and then putting out a new revision. The end result is us getting screwed. We have to pay for Via's mistakes. They will continue to do this as long as they get away with it.

 

[Mem]

<< I agree with Regalk. It is time for Via to stop rushing their products to market, >>



Another option would be don`t buy need a new motherboard every six months,I`m still on my first Via board(KT133)it`s been working great,there are always guys that want the latest and these guys are never happy .

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Here's a good rule to follow that has been around a long time... long before Via shipped its first chipset...

Wait for the second generation product to come out - likely the engineers have had a chance to work out most of the bugs in the first generation by then.

As far as your conspiracy theory goes, I seriously doubt that Dr. Evil, Fat Bastard, and Mini Me are at Via's HQ conspiring to use the United States as a testbed for crappy Taiwanese chipsets.

We should just accept that second generation products will come out, and that rapid obsolesence is just part of the price of being on the bleeding edge.

 

[panhead49]

yea..what advocate said..!!

 

[Boonesmi]

all i know is that the new revision of the kt266 (kt266a) looks killer

 

[pukemon]

Well given the longevity of the GTL+ bus, you could argue that it took 4 "tries" to get it "right" for P3 systems. Ie, Apollo Pro-> Apollo Pro+-> Apollo Pro133-> Apollo Pro133A, but I don't think that would be fair given that each incarnation did add significant features.

As far as the South Bridges go, I don't think there was/is very much difference between the 596B/686A/686B other than having ATA100 and AMR/AC97 support built in vs ATA66.

I've never really had any problems with VIA chipsets per se, but then again, I don't do any extreme overclocking. I pretty much agree with what advocate says, however, I should add, that early adopters are the ones that are the guinea pigs for bleeding edge technology. It should be understood that that's the price of having the latest and greatest.

 

[Peter]

Regalk, you one-eyed?

Chipsets going through revisions is a very common thing - however most of these revisions just fix bugs, and don't bring new features or performance enhancements. VIA actually has a pretty good track record in that regard.

It's not like others don't do it. Intel BX wasn't good until revision 3, its south bridge PIIX4 was later revised to PIIX4e to fix a major problem in power management. i810 wouldn't work with 100 MHz P-II, i810E followed on its footsteps. Its first revision ICH south bridge didn't quite work right either.

To set the record straight, what did we have from VIA so far ...

Apollo Pro: P6 chipset
Pro+: revamped for P-II
Pro-BX: pinout changed to be pin-to-pin Intel BX compatible. Never marketed.
Pro-133: pinout changed to be almost Intel BX. 133 MHz RAM and FSB.
Pro-133A: AGP 4x added
Pro-133T: CPU bus changed for Tualatin compatibility.
Pro-266: V-Link instead of PCI. DDR RAM bus.

Nothing wrong with Pro-133. In fact, it's still widely used because you can use one common board for Pro-133 and 596B south bridge or for Intel BX and PIIX4e.

To Athlon.

KX133 - Slot-A chipset.
KT133 - socket-A chipset, CPU bus adapted to AMD's sudden electrical change
KT133A - 133 MHz CPU bus added.
KT266 - DDR RAM capability added. South bridge bus changed from PCI to V-Link.
KT266A - new faster RAM controller

Nothing inherently wrong with any of those. KT266 wasn't exactly lousy to start with, KT266A is just plain amazingly fast.

South bridges ...
586 - first one from early Pentium days
586A - USB added
586B - UDMA33 added, power management added
596 - moved to BGA package, PIIX4 pinout, ACPI power management
596A - pinout slightly changed to "almost-PIIX4"
596B - IDE updated to UDMA66
686A - include super-IO, more power management, two more USB, sound and modem engine
686B - IDE updated to UDMA100.
8231 - ISA bus removed, six USB, four-channel sound, LAN MAC added.

None of them has any major bugs - it's only that the packed 686B chokes on the PCI bus which is too slow for all the integrated stuff. Which is why they moved to ...

8233 - V-Link bus instead of PCI. PCI bridge integrated to support PCI slots.
8233C - alternate version with 3COM LAN MAC instead of VIA.


Interested in similar lists for Intel, SiS or ALi? You'll get just as many chips listed, with a very similar history. Feature additions, new busses, new chip packages, electrical changes to adapt to new CPUs, and of course bug fixes.

regards, Peter