Why do people badmouth VIA

[greyeyezz]

Just curious why VIA has such a bad reputation. My K8V-X has worked flawlessly.

 

[furballi]

VIA chipset is okay... I'm not a big fan of the NF4 chipset...too buggy.

 

[boyRacer]

They've had past chipsets that were crap.

I'm on a VIA (A8V-E SE) right now too and it's been very stable.

 

[Peter]

That's exactly the kind of public opinion BS that people "hear" and keep crapping into every thread remotely related to VIA.

Q.E.D., sort of.

 

[deathwalker]

How quick people forget that VIA pretty much set the standard for chipsets at the introduction of the AMD XP line. I agree that they have not quite kept up with Nvidia and now possibley even ATI, but that doesnt make them "crap".

 

[unmerited]

All the systems I've had with the various via chipsets have been perfectly stable. I've only had one with nforce but that too has been stable.


unmerited

 

[EndGame]

IMHO it's not the boards so much as it was the 4 in 1's that upset people with Via some years ago............not much has changed though not with Via so much anymore......look at nVidia's drivers now. Don't install this/that....IDE drivers will hose your system......etc..

I run both Via (A8V Deluxe) and nForce 4 (A8n-E X2 and a SLI board) and have no problems with any of them. I do use the IDE drivers for the nForce boards but not the firewall. The new Via drivers seem very solid. I will admitt though, it was quite sometime between this A8V and my last Via board because many times the 4 in 1's did seem to screw up more than they helped but it looks like they've fixed that.

 

[Zap]

Yeah, there were some issues with 4in1 drivers, plus BITD nobody had to install drivers to get stuff working... until around the "super 7" boards with the VIA chipsets that needed drivers, otherwise a tad unstable - but nobody was accustomed to having to install them. Some chipsets weren't as good as others, such as the 693 (crappy memory controller, replaced by much better 694) and the KT266 (much maligned, replaced by KT266A).

Generally speaking, though, their performance has been decent and reliability/stability has been decent as well. Unfortunately, they aren't viewed as "enthusiast" because they were latecomers to having "locked" PCI/AGP/PCI-E busses, and even the newer ones that are locked sometimes wouldn't clock very high beyond the maximum "official" speeds - compared to some other chipsets that are now more popular.

My older gaming rig has an MSI PT880 Neo board based on the VIA PT880 chipset for P4. IIRC that was one of their first that allowed locked AGP/PCI (besides the almost-stillborn KT880). It has had my P4 2.53GHz CPU running at 3.33GHz for two years at 175MHz FSB, a decidedly "odd" number. I never had an 800MHz FSB CPU to toss in there, but reviews I've read said that basically the board topped out at around 220MHz FSB, nowhere near the 250MHz FSB that nearly all 865PE chipset boards can do in their sleep let alone much higher that the better 865PE chipset boards can do.

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: deathwalker
How quick people forget that VIA pretty much set the standard for chipsets at the introduction of the AMD XP line. I agree that they have not quite kept up with Nvidia and now possibley even ATI, but that doesnt make them "crap".

Its unfortunate to, in my case. I was waiting on the Via K8T900 chipset, so I could migrate my previous X2 3800+ rig to, and get it off of the nForce4 garbage. ATI is a new player in the game of chipsets, so I didn't want to take a chance with it. Instead of keeping my X2, I replaced it with an Intel system.
Besides the SB Live issue with Via chipsets, I previously had no issues with my last Via based platform I had (MSI KT133A, Thunderbird 1.3Ghz)..
VIA seems to have fallen asleep, and have allowed ATI to push them out of the chipset market. Its unfortunate for users who prefer AMD CPUs

 

[RiDE]

Originally posted by: deathwalker
How quick people forget that VIA pretty much set the standard for chipsets at the introduction of the AMD XP line. I agree that they have not quite kept up with Nvidia and now possibley even ATI, but that doesnt make them "crap".

This is an enthusiast board, and thus crap could perhaps mean disappointing? My KT600 certainly was.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
Besides the SB Live issue with Via chipsets

That was an issue with PCI latency, and the wierd interaction between how VIA implemented PCI latency and how Creative Labs set the Live to grab "more."

 

[EatSpam]

I have some VIA mini-ITX stuff. Its very stable, if a bit slow.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
Besides the SB Live issue with Via chipsets

That was an issue with PCI latency, and the wierd interaction between how VIA implemented PCI latency and how Creative Labs set the Live to grab "more."

Nope, that actually was a genuine PCI specification violation on the SB!Live's end. SiS chipsets of that time even hang hard with that device on the PCI bus. The Live 5.1 series had that fixed.

 

[Zap]

Thanks for clearing that up. I remembered something... but alas the memory is the first to go... forgot what was next...

Another reason to not buy Creative Labs sound cards. :evil: I really, really hate their drivers. Besides being bloated and occasionally known to have spyware, they only offer "upgrade only" drivers on their web sites so you HAVE to have an original driver CD.

 

[jazzboy]

Never had a problem with VIA myself. Been rock solid stable. This being from someone who used a KT400 motherboard with a 1.3 Duron and then a K8T800 mb with an A64 3000+ which I still sometimes use.

Although I will say that in the last few months I've had terrible blue screen crashing only fixed by setting both my DVD drives to PIO mode. It seemed to start happening when I installed GT Legends which has the ominous Starforce :|

 

[deathwalker]

Originally posted by: RiDE

Originally posted by: deathwalker
How quick people forget that VIA pretty much set the standard for chipsets at the introduction of the AMD XP line. I agree that they have not quite kept up with Nvidia and now possibley even ATI, but that doesnt make them "crap".

This is an enthusiast board, and thus crap could perhaps mean disappointing? My KT600 certainly was.

If you read my post a little closer..you notice the word "introduction". The KT600 was at the end of the the KT series of Socket A chipsets..BTW, I built several systems on the ECS KT600 mobo for entry/mid level users and never had any issues with them. Though it was the start of the backwards AGP card compatibility stuff in the VIA line of chipsets.

 

[will889]

KT880 was actually the last K7 - basically an intro into VIA's transition into the K8 chipset (same exact chipset).

 

[erikistired]

i'm impatiently waiting for the new via chipset. i used to run nothing but via chipset boards and loved them. i'm not really impressed with nf4 at all.

 

[will889]

Mee too. I go way back with VIA.

 

[dwcal]

Originally posted by: Zap
Unfortunately, they aren't viewed as "enthusiast" because they were latecomers to having "locked" PCI/AGP/PCI-E busses, and even the newer ones that are locked sometimes wouldn't clock very high beyond the maximum "official" speeds - compared to some other chipsets that are now more popular.

Yes, that's my big complaint about VIA boards. Otherwise I'm happy with them.

 

[chucky2]

For those of us that lived through the MVP3 chipset days, <tongue in cheek>especially the provided ease of setup they had with Windows 95 and 98</tongue in cheek>, and the lovely driver model they had at the time (read: No 4-in-1's, you figure out which driver and the order it needed to be installled in), whatever rep. that VIA "enjoys" with us is entirely deserved.

With Windows XP, things got lots better...but, trust me (for whatever that's worth), it was not happy days back then.

EDIT: Now, I do give VIA credit for creating a forum for users of devices with their products to post on, however 1.) it doesn't look like people who post there necessairily receive actual support from VIA and 2.) Lordy, the people posting there are having some of the same compatibility issues that I used to have when setting up MVP3 systems back in the Win 95/98 days.......just totally unacceptable IMHO.

VIA Arena Forums

Chuck

 

[Peter]

I've been using VIA chipsets since Apollo VP-1, three and a half generations before MVP3. The latter was a really solid chipset, best performance chipset on the latter days of socket-7.

Driver installations always were a nightmare and a gamble on W95 or W98. Selective memory on your end?

 

[imported_derekn]

Originally posted by: Peter

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
Besides the SB Live issue with Via chipsets

That was an issue with PCI latency, and the wierd interaction between how VIA implemented PCI latency and how Creative Labs set the Live to grab "more."

Nope, that actually was a genuine PCI specification violation on the SB!Live's end. SiS chipsets of that time even hang hard with that device on the PCI bus. The Live 5.1 series had that fixed.

I only started building PCs in 2001. My first machine I put together was a VIA KT133a chipset motherboard (Tyan s2390b). I was also unfortunate to have a SB Live card and that combinationed wrecked havoc on my system (random reboots, IDE corruption). The same SB Live card worked fine on my friends Intel CPU based system. I didn't let this bad taste for VIA impact my other mobo choices.

I built a Asus a7v8x (died after 3 months), Asus A7v8x-x (still using it) and Chaintech SKT600 machine (gave it to a friend). I do prefer the nforce chipset though(own 4 boards that use nforce chipset). Asus a7n8x deluxe, 2 Abit Nf7 and MSI k8ngm2-fid.
Since the MSI k8ngm2 is a nforce430 chipset, I have not encountered the SATA II hd corruption issues that Nforce4 chipset based machines seem to be having.

 

[chucky2]

Peter- I believe the pre-MVP3 or VP3 chipsets from VIA were Intel chipset clones or something close to it...

...with the MVP3, that I believe was VIA's first own design; or, improvement on the VP3 design.

I'm sure it didn't help that motherboard manufacturers treated the MVP3 based boards mainly as budget, so, who knows how little quality engineering went into them...and, people tended to run lots of budget gear on them while they would opt for better quality gear on the Intel rigs...

...but my real main beef was with their terrible driver support...from unclear order in which to install the patches, to which patches were needed, to the patches causing instability/even greater instability...it was just sometimes a nightmare.

Even worse was that the MVP3 was competing against the Intel BX chipset, which I think everyone can agree, was considered very stable.

VIA had a chance to redeem themselves with the driver mess with their KX133 and KT133/KT133a solutions...but still, they didn't come up with total system solutions that were as smooth as Intel. DISCLAIMER: I'm an AMD fan, so AMD fanboy's, no flames needed.

Had VIA operated like a first class company and come out with solid drivers, a good driver installer that would automatically detect what was needed and install it - or, at least a clear order in which to install their 4 part drivers, I would have much more respect for them.

nVidia IMHO with nForce and nForce2 showed what a non-Intel chipset vendor was capable of...but, sadly, they have gotten more "VIA-like"...

Hopefully, with the advent of the Socket AM2 stuff, and nVidia's Business Platform, mabye they'll return to the clear advantage they had over VIA when they came out with nForce and nForce2.

In short: VIA, and/or VIA letting mobo manufacturers get away with shoddy implementation, is mostly to blame for their poor rep.

Chuck

 

[RiDE]

Originally posted by: deathwalker

Originally posted by: RiDE

Originally posted by: deathwalker
How quick people forget that VIA pretty much set the standard for chipsets at the introduction of the AMD XP line. I agree that they have not quite kept up with Nvidia and now possibley even ATI, but that doesnt make them "crap".

This is an enthusiast board, and thus crap could perhaps mean disappointing? My KT600 certainly was.

If you read my post a little closer..you notice the word "introduction". The KT600 was at the end of the the KT series of Socket A chipsets..BTW, I built several systems on the ECS KT600 mobo for entry/mid level users and never had any issues with them. Though it was the start of the backwards AGP card compatibility stuff in the VIA line of chipsets.

I had no problems with stability. It was a good chipset for entry/mid level users but that's it.