via southbridges slowing down PCI, whats your take?

[Byte]

heres the artcile: Techchannel

whats your take on this? Also they have some latency patches, has anyone tryed them?

UPDATE

and some comments about the article from The Tech Report

 

[oldfart]

Linkified
Yikes! A pretty interesting read. Just another reason to stay away from VIA.

 

[Pabster]

Hmmm, for some reason, this thread has been pretty damn quiet.

Where's all the VIA zealots to refute? Or do you just accept what I've preached for over 2 years now?

What is interesting is that SiS 735 was not tested. I suspect (with a high degree of certainty) it would show the best performance of all of them -- even SiS 645, as MuTiOL only offers 533MB/s (albeit still significantly better than VIA's V-Link -- and the numbers show that.)

PCI latency issues surrounding VIA chipsets are nothing new. MVP3 was my first tirade in to such issues. It's been downhill from there.

I'd also like to point out that it isn't coincidental that there are so many "Why is my RAID0 so slow on [insert VIA based board here]?"

 

[Mem]

<< Hmmm, for some reason, this thread has been pretty damn quiet. >>



Hehe maybe people are tired of VIA bashing, now we know how neutral you are with VIA ,anyway I saw this quote over at VIA hardware

<< VIA PCI Bus Transfer Patch Released
Our resident guru George has released his latest VIA Latency patch that should help boost transfers across the PCI bus for all VIA chipsets. You can grab the patch here. If you want to discuss the patch and its operation or just catch up on what's going on in this topic, here's our discussion thread: >>

.

Hmm I`m sure I will lose sleep over my ATA-133 hd in my ATA-100 based VIA board .

 

[Pabster]

Am I the only one that finds it a little ridiculous they have to rely on a third-party volunteer guy to come up with "fixes" for VIA core logic deficiencies?

There's just no excuse for that stuff.

Call me a VIA hater, go ahead. I just can't believe more people haven't chimed in... ATA/133 doesn't make much of a real performance difference, but with multiple drives (ala RAID) the PCI latency and timing issues -- combined with poor bandwidth between the north and south bridges -- can be a real disaster.

 

[oldfart]

Who knows, it could possibly even cause soundcard issues.....NAH...not possible.

 

[Byte]

well I tryed the "patch" so far nothing negative. I'll try run some benches later with some RAIDs and SCSI stuff. I think Nforce should have a pretty good PCI performance. This might be the the biggest reason to try an Nforce...

 

[NFS4]

<< Am I the only one that finds it a little ridiculous they have to rely on a third-party volunteer guy to come up with "fixes" for VIA core logic deficiencies?

There's just no excuse for that stuff.

Call me a VIA hater, go ahead. I just can't believe more people haven't chimed in... ATA/133 doesn't make much of a real performance difference, but with multiple drives (ala RAID) the PCI latency and timing issues -- combined with poor bandwidth between the north and south bridges -- can be a real disaster. >>


I find it funny that the person that bashes VIA the most here on this board also has THREE ATI video cards in his system Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. ATI is no better than VIA

 

[Pabster]

NFS4 wrote:

"I find it funny that the person that bashes VIA the most here on this board also has THREE ATI video cards in his system Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. ATI is no better than VIA "

Oh, come on Overall, I'm quite pleased with my ATI products. I absolutely love my 8500DV. The driver situation certainly is a bit frustrating, but ... we're comparing apples to oranges. VIA's constant "patches" are actually "fixes" for hardware deficiencies. That isn't the case with ATI's driver dilemma. The hardware is fine, it is the drivers which leave a bit to be desired.

 

[NFS4]

<< NFS4 wrote:

"I find it funny that the person that bashes VIA the most here on this board also has THREE ATI video cards in his system Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. ATI is no better than VIA "

Oh, come on Overall, I'm quite pleased with my ATI products. I absolutely love my 8500DV. The driver situation certainly is a bit frustrating, but ... we're comparing apples to oranges. VIA's constant "patches" are actually "fixes" for hardware deficiencies. That isn't the case with ATI's driver dilemma. The hardware is fine, it is the drivers which leave a bit to be desired. >>


Hardware defect or software defect. It doesn't matter which it is if the product isn't performing up to snuff

 

[sandorski]

Hmm, certainly not great.

 

[Budman]

What's so bad about Ati drivers ?

My Radeon 32 ddr works just fine here.

 

[Insane3D]

nm... I'm staying out of this one..

 

[Budman]

<< nm... I'm staying out of this one.. >>



Too late we sucked you in !!

Now please post your comment Insane3d .

 

[Bovinicus]

<< Oh, come on Overall, I'm quite pleased with my ATI products. I absolutely love my 8500DV. The driver situation certainly is a bit frustrating, but ... we're comparing apples to oranges. VIA's constant "patches" are actually "fixes" for hardware deficiencies. That isn't the case with ATI's driver dilemma. The hardware is fine, it is the drivers which leave a bit to be desired. >>


So you know this for a fact? You are the one writing these drivers? You know how they are written and what the code does? Don't say things that make you sound like you know what you're talking about when you really don't.

 

[Idoxash]

is it just me or is the net getting to be more like schools i try ( other words i said a the other word for crap and it never posted ) how sad....this makes me want to leave this forum.

now once again

this is what i and "Pabster" and a few others around here has always say

via is junk!!!

now hate me if you want but it's junk like this that makes me and others leave amd and goto intel ( if amd or someone other comp can't come up with a chipset that is stable in 4 mths then im intel........i will own a real "computer" ) and it's also companys like via that are junk that keep other ppl getting there foot in the door to make a better chipset.......anyway one day you all will learn when you think that your pc is not stable, fast as it should......

 

[Idoxash]

oh wow it took suck and crap didya know on this one site that is look at by adults mostly ban me for saying suck and crap now thats just way to far hahaha

 

[Idoxash]

haha well i'm glad i may you laf and feel good eh...

 

[kyoshozx]

Orcish, I'm using a sb audigy without any problems, but before I had a sb live without any problems either. I guess maybe i'm lucky.
Oh yeah my mb is an Asus a7v133 so it's using the via kt133a chipset also.

I just installed the latency patch, but I haven't notice any major differences.


I have a radeon 8500, and I had a few minor problems with it, but overall i'm still happy with the 2d quality, and it's 3d performance. The drivers could definately be improved, but I haven't encountered any major problems.

 

[boyRacer]

Well there you go... i was about to go get me a VP6 but nooooooooooo...

 

[Byte]

when did this thread turn into a ATI suck thread? Oh well i don't blame you guys, they do suck
As for built in sound, they all suck. Even the Iwill cmedia can't compare to SBLive. i upgrade the cmedia on my sises comp cuz the cmedia was doing some all things like no bass from teh sub for no reason whatsoever spontaneously, it was fine for months. Well i stuck in a SB Live and WOW everything sound clearer, and teh bass was twice as strong as the cmedia ever was. I also have an iWill at my dorm, and i'm going to put an SB live in there too. So far i haven't had any problems with SB and Via stuff. I'm trying to get rid of VIA stuff as soon as they get some nice nForce boards.

 

[Pabster]

Bovinicus wrote:

"So you know this for a fact? You are the one writing these drivers? You know how they are written and what the code does? Don't say things that make you sound like you know what you're talking about when you really don't."

Didn't mommy teach you any matters?

You don't have to agree with my opinions, but at least have the common courtesy to respect them.

Of course I don't write the drivers. But I do know this: my ATI cards are all running perfectly. The only card I really had issue with was my original 8500s. But the latest drivers are pretty decent. I haven't experienced any issues playing a wide variety of titles.

Again, it's apples to oranges. Besides that, WTF does ATI have to do with this discussion? Why do people always make excuses for VIA?

 

[Gstanfor]

I first noticed the lack of performance concerning the PCI bus and VIA when I moved from an ALI V super7 board to a VIA MP3 board. My tv card video capturing capability was severely degraded and stayed subpar compared to the ALI V even when I migrated to the Athlon and Kt133/KT133A.

I received my nforce motherboard yesterday and even though I only have one DDR dimm in it and my 1.1gig T-Bird it is wiping the floor with the old boards. I especially like the fact that the machine runs "smoother" with nforce - you can do lots of things all at once without noticing hiccups and momentary delays.

I use ghost to back my primary partitions up (at a dos prompt - no HDD caching), the VIA board has always struggled to maintain 66mb/s throughput while ghosting whereas the nforce sat at 97-99mb/s the entire time.

I can assure you that short of a MAJOR improvement in VIA's chipsets they won't find their way into one of my machines again in a hurry. They have had a good run as the defacto standard in the Socket A market due to almost no competition, but now there are better chipsets out there - chipsets truly worthy of supporting the Athlon.

Greg

 

[Gstanfor]

VIA have 60% market share at the moment mostly due to the fact that they were the first third party chipset maker to support the Athlon, and they have ridden the coattails of the athlon's success. If there had been another competitor with a comparable product I doubt they would be in strong Socket A position they occupy presently. Also they do well in emerging price conscious markets.

greg

 

[LostHiWay]

I think we are just seeing the first of this very serious issue. I tested out a new Abit KR7A-Raid motherboard the other day and the RAID 0 peformance was horrible. Just about the same as a single drive. The KT266a chipset just can't keep up with the the faster ata133 drives.. I've heard rumors that the new EPoX 8KHA2 board has been delayed becasue of this problem.