via southbridges slowing down PCI, whats your take?

[oldfart]

I still run Intel systems pretty much because of VIA. Every time I think of going AMD, I can't find a mobo I feel good about. I was thinking the KT266A boards were going to be the ones that would change my mind. Nope, just like past VIA boards, I'll pass. I run Intel not because of the CPU's, but because of the excellent chipsets. VIA releases 4 in 1's it seems weekly to try and patch around hardware bugs. With Intel, you install the inf file ONCE and you are done. The first version released with the chipset works, bug free. Quite a difference. SiS now has my interest. If the major brands release a good, quality made 745 based board, I'll take a serious look at it.

I don't know why ATi got dragged into this. It has nothing to do with the VIA discussion. Maybe its just me, but I am much less tolerant of mainboard that is flawed. To me, that is the base of your system and MUST be absolutely solid, bug free. VIA does not make such a product.

There are people here that have been branded as "VIA haters". Maybe they are a little too vocal at times, but I think they are pretty accurate in their assessment of VIA's quality. What I find stranger are the people who blindly support VIA, even with all the evidence of how flawed their products are. I've even seen the 4 in 1's called "elegant" <rolls eyes>. Now thats a good one.

 

[Mem]

<< There are people here that have been branded as "VIA haters". Maybe they are a little too vocal at times, but I think they are pretty accurate in their assessment of VIA's quality. What I find stranger are the people who blindly support VIA, even with all the evidence of how flawed their products are. I've even seen the 4 in 1's called "elegant" <rolls eyes>. Now thats a good one. >>



Oldfart each to his own,I never flame other brands because everybody has their favourites,however I was an ex-Intel owner that went to VIA/AMD combo and believe or not have the same stability, I use my PCs for gaming both online and offline so stability is important,I`ve installed every Via 4 in 1 driver from 4.24 up to 4.37 with no problems and one of my PCs has XP OS so I don`t even need to install 4 in 1 drivers but do since I prefer to have the latest drivers,I`m not saying VIA is perfect because no board or company is perfect.

What I`m saying is I`ve had no problems and am a happy gamer .

 

[Budman]

<< I still run Intel systems pretty much because of VIA. Every time I think of going AMD, I can't find a mobo I feel good about. I was thinking the KT266A boards were going to be the ones that would change my mind. Nope, just like past VIA boards, I'll pass. I run Intel not because of the CPU's, but because of the excellent chipsets. VIA releases 4 in 1's it seems weekly to try and patch around hardware bugs. With Intel, you install the inf file ONCE and you are done. The first version released with the chipset works, bug free. Quite a difference. SiS now has my interest. If the major brands release a good, quality made 745 based board, I'll take a serious look at it.

I don't know why ATi got dragged into this. It has nothing to do with the VIA discussion. Maybe its just me, but I am much less tolerant of mainboard that is flawed. To me, that is the base of your system and MUST be absolutely solid, bug free. VIA does not make such a product.

There are people here that have been branded as "VIA haters". Maybe they are a little too vocal at times, but I think they are pretty accurate in their assessment of VIA's quality. What I find stranger are the people who blindly support VIA, even with all the evidence of how flawed their products are. I've even seen the 4 in 1's called "elegant" <rolls eyes>. Now thats a good one >>



I couldnt have said it better myself,i agree with the above statement.

Merry Christmas oldfart.

 

[oldfart]

<< Chipset is not the most important part of the system >>


I dont agree with that.

I have all sorts of upgrade paths available to me. My current system is still plenty fast for me. When I do my next upgrade, not using VIA doesn't limit my upgrade options all that much.

 

[Pabster]

Orcish wrote:

"VIA is suck? If so, how come they have 60%+ of the world's chipset market? Market share is a very serious thing."

Market share doesn't necessarily (or even often) equate to the quality or superiority of a product or brand name. You've picked two perfect examples -- VIA and Intel. VIA has a large share in the Socket A market because they have had next to zero competition. But that is beginning to change. SiS is coming on like a freight train, and I'm told ALi's latest is pretty impressive as well. At any rate, your logic is flawed. For example, how large of market share did Firestone have before the Ford fiascoes? See my point? Popularity / Market Share can't always be construed as a "superior" product or label.

It's high time VIA shaped up or shipped out, IMHO.

 

[Pabster]

LostHiWay wrote:

"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."

You just might be on to something there I've often wondered why all these KT266A boards aren't shipping with the 8233A (ATA/133) south bridges, seeing as how VIA has had them ready for a while now. I mean, they're replacing one chipset already (KT266 to A) why not both?

I'm not quite sure what to make of it all. V-Link, albeit a bit dismal at only 266MB/s (compared to SiS' 533MB/s and 1.2GB/s) ought to be sufficient bandwidth between the north and south bridges, even with a RAID0 and ATA/133 drives. Something tells me the issues lie more in the PCI latency and timing difficulties which have plagued each and every VIA chipset.

 

[Cancer12]

So how do Athlon users get around this? Even the AMD 760 uses a via southbridge. What southbridge does the Sis 745 (I think thats the athlon one) use? How about the upcoming alimagik board? Im staying away from nforce boards because of reported stability issures.

 

[Zebo]

The SIS chip is just that; a chip.

 

[Zebo]

<< Jesus Christ! We poor VIA users once again have to install new 4.37 4-in-1s, only a couple of days after the 4.36s were released! They say the new version enables AGP4X on nVidia cards... Or Jesus... >>



Orcish, some people may consider this tradition-bashing / religion-bashing, and insensitive to some people. I suggest you cool down before posting.

 

[Jace]

I would appreciate it if the users of this forum would cut out the foul language and blaspheming (I think we could manage to not blaspheme anyone's god, whether it be Jesus or another). I realize that in today's world that's not a "popular" stance, but just realize that I'm only asking, politely, not sarcastically or anything like that. Just like I would ask you to move if you bumped into me at the mall and stepped on my big toe. No one really even has to repsond, just think about it.

Now back to the topic at hand. I've been a Via user and supporter for years, and as a system administrator with a load of certs, I've been able to properly research and implement very well working systems built around Via chipsets since the MVP3 days, but not without tangible more work than the Intel counterparts. I'm currently using about 10 KT133 and KT133a chipsets with no visible "issues" at all. I do have to say that after the recent problems that have cropped up around the 686B southbridge and several botched 4-in-1 driver releases that I'm going to do even more research before building or recommending Via based solutions. That said, I will probably stick with Via if they are able to gracefully skirt this latest issue regarding PCI bus slowdowns with an official patch. Time will tell. Hoping for the best.

 

[neuralfx]

<< Jesus Christ! We poor VIA users once again have to install new 4.37 4-in-1s, only a couple of days after the 4.36s were released! They say the new version enables AGP4X on nVidia cards... Or Jesus... >>




well if its of any note, im running win2k on an a7v133/gf2gts/win2k .. and im not using the via4in1 .. have been for quite awhile .. nothing against them, i use them on other machines, but the 4.35 (xp update) updategave me some problems with my cdrom (via 686b+ creative type bugs) so i just used default .. just my 2cents ..
-neural

 

[Gstanfor]

There isn't anything unstable about the nforce. MIne has been rock solid from the moment I installed it in the case.

There have been problems reported about crucial ddr memory and a 200mhz cpu fsb, but I think that is easily fixable witha bios update.
The only other problems mainly stem from people using memoy slot 2 instead of 3 for the second dimm.

Greg

 

[Byte]

Whats weird is that we see this rarely on otehr benchmarks that theoretically test then entire system, Via seems to still beat almost every benchmark out there...

 

[Gstanfor]

Byte:
That's because most benchmarks only test one part of the system at a time. This is not how most applications work in real-life. I am far more interested in real-life performance than benchmark performance.

As the old adage goes: the are lies, damned lies and statistics (simple benchmarks).

Greg

 

[Daovonnaex]

<< What's so bad about Ati drivers ?

My Radeon 32 ddr works just fine here. >>

ATi has a talent for electrical engineering, but obviously not computer science. They release drivers that never realize hardware potential. But I digress. I'm pleased with neither Via nor SiS--SiS may or may not have this problem, but their chipsets are hardly fault proof. That's probably why so many Pentium 4 fans are choosing the i845D chipset, which has inferior performance, over the SiS 645 or the P4X266/P4X266A chipsets. Frankly, Via and SiS might have serious problems once nVidia gets into high gear with their new chipset division.

 

[oldfart]

I'll take an i845D or i850 over buggy VIA junk any day. Poor IDE performance, Soundcard issues, high PCI latency, weekly 4 in 1 bug patches..yuk. As far as performance goes, the P4 DDR chipsets are all very close, not enough difference to notice outside of benchmarks. I'll take the one with the best stability. I've seen it stated several times that the i845 is way more stable a platform.
To quote Anand:


<< We've been working on a P4X266/P4X266A roundup alongside the i845 DDR roundup and the maturity of the boards is like night and day; the i845 platforms are much more stable, especially when operated with all memory banks populated >>


The VIA PCI latency problems are just one of their issues. I'd gladly give up a 3Dmark or two for a stable platform.

 

[Byte]

some updates are can found here: tech report

 

[oldfart]

Tech report article for those that dont want to click:

Darth VIA returns?
by Ryu Connor - 12:15 pm, December 22, 2001

I had hoped some months ago I would never have to write another news piece or article about a difficulty in VIA's chipsets. I had sincerely hoped Darth VIA had passed on into the annals of history. It's not to be, though: tecChannel is reporting that they have received confirmation that VIA chipsets, from the brand-new KT266A all the way back to the venerable MVP3, suffer from a PCI bug which limits the PCI bus bandwith up to 32% versus their competition. The impact of this bug is mostly strongly felt in high-end storage solutions and is illustrated quite well by this article.
Note that later VIA chipsets such as the P4X266A and KT266A no longer have their IDE controllers mapped to the PCI bus (see the block diagram here), so using the on-board controllers should get you around this difficulty. This workaround unfortunately will not help with PCI cards or on-board PCI IDE or SCSI controllers, all of which would map directly to the PCI bus.

VIA might get lucky, though. The problem might only be an incorrect register choice instead of a fundamental flaw. George Breese of VIAHardware.com fame has managed to paritally alleviate the issue with his latest tweak. You can see here that his tweak shows encouraging results, but still leaves the VIA chipsets lagging behind the competition. Assuming VIA can correct the problem through software, let's hope that those changes to the BIOS or 4-in-1 drivers won't create new problems or cause performance in others areas to suffer.

I feel this problem is pretty serious, especially with the proliferation of IDE RAID. While I might could see why the bug was not detectable on the MVP3 because of a lack of applications with the necessary bandwidth requirements, the problem remained straight into today's newest core logic chips. Today such applications are abundant. It seems improbable to me that VIA was not aware of the issue. VIA, might I suggest you follow in your competitors' footsteps (Intel) and release the specification sheets for your chipsets to the public, errata and all. Being open and truthful is an amazing way to avoid the appearance of impropriety?not to mention a great way to make me eat crow.

We will follow up with VIA and see what they have to say about this issue.

 

[BFG10K]

Regarding the PCI/Southbridge issue, I'm sure that future 4-in-1s will help to speed things up. Also I see a lot of you complaining about VIA's chipset drivers yet every single other manufacturer has exactly the same kind of chipset drivers. In fact VIA's are packaged in a nicer way so it's easier to use them.

Every single motherboard needs chipset drivers and will have problems with older versions. My 440BX used to lock up in AGP x2 mode until I upgraded my chipset drivers. Did that make it unstable or a POS? Nope, not even close.

I love my VIA KT133a. I was almost paranoid about switching to VIA after using my Intel 440 BX but I can safely say that my KT133a is every bit as a stable as my 440 BX was. I've tried a lot of combinations of 4-in-1s and nVidia drivers and not one of them has given me any problems. I don't see any of the infinite loop problems or BSODs that some of you are seeing and I don't have any issues with my Creative Labs Soundblaster. I always get clear, well-defined sound.

There's nothing wrong with 4-in-1 drivers, nor is there anything wrong with VIA continually fixing issues and improving performance. My next chipset will definitely be a VIA KT266a, no question about it.

 

[BFG10K]

Orcish, have you switched sides recently or something? I seem to remember you arguing for SiS chipsets and now I see you praising VIA to no end.

Also in the other thread you recommended a P4 for a price/performance solution, which quite frankly is an absolute joke.

What's the deal?

 

[oldfart]

BFG, yes Intel has chipset drivers also. Here is the BIG difference. When a new Intel Chipset is released, the inf file works first time. I got an ASUS CUSL2 when the 815E was brand new. I put in the chipset drivers once. The first set released with the chipset was bug free. There are not weekly chipset driver releases to patch around hardware bugs. I dont want a motherboard where they are "continually fixing issues ". I want one without issues. I'm glad that the VIA boards have worked well for you. Many people are not so lucky. I have a friend that curses his out constantly. BTW, I've also owned 5 different BX boards, still have one. I've never installed any chipset drivers other than the included Win9X version. Never had an issue.

 

[Bovinicus]

<< 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. >>



I was talking about your bashing of VIA. I think ATi is a good company, and I'm considering upgrading to the 8500 in the next few months. It was in reference to the hardware deficencies statement. The rhetorical questions should have been phrased better. I meant, how do you know the drivers are making up for hardware deficinces and not problems with the past drivers? You are just saying their hardware has problems because you have got so wrapped up in anti-VIA fantacism that it is creating "facts" for you to express on these forums. I am on my 3rd VIA motherboard now. I have never had any problems with them. They are all rock solid. How come no one is bashing NVIDIA for their faults? Their famous driver team has come up with some drivers that have obvious problem, at least in XP. There is always a scapegoat. It annoys me. VIA makes good hardware, I don't care what you say.

 

[BFG10K]

BFG, yes Intel has chipset drivers also. Here is the BIG difference. When a new Intel Chipset is released, the inf file works first time.

In theory I could still be running the 428s that came with my mobo CD and I'd still be fine. However I like to uprade my 4-in-1s for potential performance increases and potential bug fixes. There's nothing wrong with certain issues on a chipset as long as the chipset drivers fix them and I never see any evidence of the mentioned issues. That is precisely how my VIA experience has been.

I've never installed any chipset drivers other than the included Win9X version. Never had an issue.

I'm glad it was fine for you. Regardless, I'm not saying that the 440BX board is bad, nor am I saying that chipset drivers are bad. Also I'm in no way bitter that I had to download the latest Intel chipset drivers because like I said before, chipset drivers and motherboards go hand in hand.

All I'm saying that both the 440BX and the KT133a boards are good and that chipset drivers which fix issues and improve performance are good as well.

Orcish, that's cool. While I don't agree with some of your comments, I just wanted to understand where you stand on the various issues. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

 

[Mem]

Hmm I own two VIA boards yes both very stable and before this SiS and Intel chipset,I don`t see the big deal with 4 in 1 drivers they are so easy to install ,I would rather have frequent updates then one every 6 month or so,as for bugs well hardware is changing so fast it will happen as long as something is done about it there should`nt be a problem.

At the end of the day companies like Asus,MSI,Epox etc would not be using them if there was serious problems with VIA chipsets.


Anyway my intake is simple buy what you want ,but don`t try to stop others buying different chipsets.

 

[Insane3D]

Just an FYI since I'm not getting involved in the topic of this thread, the Epox boards allow for the PCI Latency to be freely adjustable in the bios, and the Delay Transaction option to be enabled or disabled...