what A64 chipset is better, NVIDIA or VIA?

[Chunkee]

Getting ready to get one of these bad boys...which is MORE STABLE?

JC

 

[shiner]

Via...hands down. Both are stable but the Via chipset kills the current Nvidia chipset in performance.

 

[IceCreamMan2633]

nforce 3 for overclocking and via for stock

btw, nforce 3 250 chipset is coming soon! It will have PCI/AGP locks, 1000mhz HT and more.

 

[Mem]

btw, nforce 3 250 chipset is coming soon! It will have PCI/AGP locks, 1000mhz HT and more

Ah but according to the Inquirer,

GREAT NEWS for Athlon 64 overclockers, at least for wannabe Athlon 939-pin overclockers, once this CPU arrives.
A problem for tweakers of Athlon 754 CPUs is that neither chipset available for the processor - K8T800 or Nforce 3 -- allows you to set AGP and PCI speeds. So, when you overclock, you overclock the frontside bus, but the AGP and PCI devices have their limits.

I tried to overclock a 3400+ rated Athlon CPU, that works at 2200MHz, to close to 2365MHz with a FSB overclock of 15MHz but that was as far as we could go.

Well, this is about to change, as VIA's K8T800 PRO will be enable you to fix AGP and PCI values. This means that your PCI and AGP devices won't be over-overclocked.

Link .We have to wait and see how this plays out.

 

[IceCreamMan2633]

THE HEAVILY delayed Nforce 3 250 motherboard chipset will be introduced on the 1st of March. This motherboard chipset was announced back in November 2003 and Nvidia's CEO mentioned it more than a few times in company conference calls.
This chip will be able to have its AGP and PCI fixed that will help in overclocking and it will bring Gbit LAN and serial ATA.

This chipset will rock 939 Athlons but will be used for 754 pins since the memory controller part is placed nicely inside of the Athlon GX/FX/ Opteron core.

Nvidia's partners might have some boards ready for CeBIT so the real availability of these boards seams to be April. AMD still has to launch socket 939.

The press that Nvidia looks after will be invited to a nice party next Monday, two chaps from the US will be able to explain why this chipset was so long delayed.

I almost forgot. The chip will have HT 1000MHz support. µ

Link

 

[DAPUNISHER]

nforce 3 for overclocking and via for stock

For me it's nF3 for overclocking AMD8151 for stock@the moment.

 

[McArra]

My Chaintech ZNF3 works great, but I still haven't overclocked since my ram memory hasn't arrives yet. Difference in performance between NF3 and Via K8t800 are very little. NF3 for overclocking.

 

[Peter]

... and then we'll also have SiS 755FX as soon as socket-939 is here, necessitating 250 MHz HyperTransport support.
Meanwhile, the SiS 755 is a good choice too.

 

[cowdog]

Just one more in the herd, or? AOpen AK89 Max (nForce3 150)

Here's a quote from their website: about the Aopen "1 MHz Stepping AGP/PCI Overclocking" feature listed for the AK89 Max:

"For computer system, all components run with their fixed working frequencies; and all kinds of peripheral components frequencies run interactively with CPU system frequency in a regular basis. Overclocking, a must-do-thing preferred by people these days, is done basically by manually adjusting CPU FSB up above its standard rate through BIOS. AOpen provide sets of AGP/PCI frequencies for overclockers to manually overclock AGP/PCI frequency while taking care of the system stability at the same time. Your adjustment on AGP/PCI would not affect the CPU clock speed at all, because the working frequencies of AGP/PCI and CPU FSB are functioning asynchronously. The available range of AGP/PCI frequencies will be variable according to the different motherboards. With this solution given, there would be no hassle from AGP/PCI overclocking, and thus PCI frequency would no longer be the headache to overclocking anymore."

Now that's intriguing.

Here's the specification page for the AK89 Max where I found the link to the above quote.

 

[Chunkee]

i bought the asus and a 3400 a64

woot

now...what memory to get?

JC

 

[IceCreamMan2633]

BH-5 chips- even tho they're freakin' rare these days.

 

[Boonesmi]

of the current options i would go with the via k8t800 or sis755

but with next generation stuff about to come out maybe the nvidia close the gap and also be a good option

 

[Peter]

Apparently SiS are first with adding PCI Express to their gear. At least their 965 south bridge with two added PCI Express 1x lanes and integrated Gbit Ethernet, is apparently available already. The PCI Express lanes, while PCI Express cards will not be available for a while I guess, meanwhile allow getting high bandwidth onboard stuff like FireWire off the slow 32-bit 33 MHz PCI bus.