Why do people badmouth VIA

[Stumps]

why do people badmouth VIA...the same reason they badmouth SIS...their idoits.

VIA and SIS chipset are quite good...I have boards with Intel, Nvidia, SIS and VIA Chipset, and they all work perfectly fine...I have found the VIA KT400 based GA-7VAXP to be more stable than my NF2 based 7N400Pro, and it performs only marginally slower than it as well...as for my SIS based P4 boards...well my GA-8S648FX-L can kick the crap out my 8PE800 pro any day of the week....same as my SINXP1394...it can hammer any 8PENXP with out any hassle

 

[nemesismk2]

I have only used two motherboards using VIA chipsets, the Asus A7V266-C KT266C and the Jetway 663AS Pro KT133 and they both ran very well without any problems. I am currently using the Asrock 939 Dual Sata2 which uses ULI M1695 but after Nvidia's takeover of ULI I will consider VIA or SIS for my next motherboard purchase.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I've ran some VIA chipsets Asus A7V, Giga-byte KT400(don't remember model), and am about to run the K8T800. i've never had any problems actually due to the chipset.

 

[kb3edk]

Originally posted by: 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.

I've got the same complaint as the two of you about VIA... I just can't seem to overclock them very well. I've got an A64 rig running on an Abit AV8 and the board utterly refuses to go past 220 HTT. The same for my old MSI K8T-NeoFIS2R on Socket 754, and an ASUS SK8V on Socket 940. I never got HTT past 225 on either of those. It wasn't my CPU or RAM either... as soon as I switched to ULi boards (the ASRock 939-Dual) I started hitting stable overclocks at HTTs of 240-250 with ease.

What's the best HTT any of you have ever gotten from a VIA K8 generation board?

 

[Texun]

I've never really had a problem with VIA, I've been using them for years, but I will say of the few nVidia chipsets I've had all were slick and very stable.

 

[imported_red5]

I've had great luck with VIAs. And Intels. And Serverworks. So far, the NF4 seems like absolute crap. Blue screens of death every half hour or so. Absolutely unacceptable. Nothing should be released that BSoDs near this much.

 

[Zap]

Besides a problem with USB 2.0 devices on this particular board, I've had no such problems with Nforce 4 chipset boards... and I'm using an ECS brand.

 

[aidanjm]

I've been using an Albatron board with the VIA K8T890 chipset. It also has the VIA Envy audio chipset. It has a passive chipset heatsink, and is nice and quiet with a Zalman CPU cooler. I suspect it wouldn't be a great board for over-clock-ing, but I'm not doing that anyway. I haven't had any problems with it, it has been stable and bug-free. I really liked it. Recently I switched over to a DFI nf4 board, mainly because I wanted to try out a dual core CPU. It's really shocking how hot the northbridge chip gets compared to the via board. Also, the chipset cooler was noisy, I had to replace it with a Zalman passive chipset cooler (which then blocked one of the PCI express sockets). I've ended up with a more positive impression of the Via chipset, it's a shame the k8t890 wasn't or couldn't upgraded to take dual core cpus.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: aidanjm
I've been using an Albatron board with the VIA K8T890 chipset. It also has the VIA Envy audio chipset.

That sounds like a nice board. Yeah, Nforce4 chipsets are known to run really hot. Only things are dual core support and good overclockability - what many people want from socket 939.

 

[programmer]

Personally, I've found SiS to be very good, stable boards, almost as good as Intel-brand motherboards. My two VIA boards had lots of problems, but that was 3+ years ago. Still sours me against considering anything VIA. My newest mb, an MSI ATI-based socket 754, has been rock solid

 

[BassBomb]

ive had what... 3 via chipsets i can recall? my 1400T-bird with MSI motherboard
2500+ Barton w/ Asus A7NX-X or something
and my current setup

all ran well, my dad has a Nforce3 3000+ sock754 and it works well aslo

 

[pkme2]

My computer guru really hates VIA and he scares me too.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: pkme2
My computer guru really hates VIA and he scares me too.

I find that people who are vehemently against a product... don't know as much as they think they know.

 

[Fox5]

There's probably no current problem with VIA chipsets, maybe there never was. I'm sure it was more due to poor quality control on the motherboard manufactuers part, VIA was always the cheap chipset for the cheap cpus, so of course the motherboards would have costs cut wherever possible. However, because the processors obviously weren't bad, and because nvidia came in with strigent quality control, VIA got the bad rap. Even now, many people who have been in the PC market for a while will avoid VIA just for the old reputation. Some extremists will even avoid AMD completely.

 

[Never Knows Best]

My KT400 asus board is still my favorite although I don't mind my nforce3 250gb either.

 

[Rottie]

my board has VIA® K8T800 Pro and it is very stable. Yeah it is from ECS. I am glad I am not badmouthing with VIA chipsets

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Anyone remember the issue with the KT-266 (I think) based motherboards? Raise your FSB above 143 and say goodbye to USB functionality. I believe that that issue, combined with the PCI latency conflict with SB, and the fact that Nvidia released an agp-locked board while VIA didn't, plus (at times) comparatively slow memory throughput in various chipsets, have all contributed to VIA's less than sterling rep. Recent problems with Nforce-based products are tarnishing Nvidia's rep now, too.

I had an Epox MVP3 mobo with a 1mb cache, and it performed very well with my overclocked K6-II+.

 

[Peter]

And this would be an "issue" how, with a chipset specified for 133 MHz? It's absence of an overclocker's feature, no more no less - and pointless to 99.9% of all computer purchasers.

Again, the SB thing was purely a PCI bug on Creative's end.

 

[nemesismk2]

I can't comment on recent VIA chipsets but my Asus A7V266-C KT266 and
Jetway 663AS Pro KT133 worked perfectly!

 

[xtknight]

To prevent my monitor from going blank randomly during a game (and Windows completely crashing) I've had to set my card to AGP 4x and turn fast writes off. I believe that was the KT333 chipset on one of the Athlon XP systems I had. And the VIA chipset systems have had more BSODs than any other chipset manufacturer I had, bar none. Intel has been rock-solid for me, NVIDIA has been fairly solid, VIA has been somewhat flaky (though definitely usable), and SiS is about on the level of VIA. I'm not sure about ULi, I don't believe I have ever used an ALi or ULi chipset.

 

[MegaWorks]

People badmouth VIA cause it overclock like carp! Do you see any LanParty VIA boards?

 

[Remedy]

Originally posted by: MegaWorks
People badmouth VIA cause it overclock like carp! Do you see any LanParty VIA boards?

Overclocking isn't a gurantee from the companies road map of products and not statement in their Press release highlighted to support voiding your warranty by overclocking to make a sucessful product.

LanParty boards from DFI didn't come out at all until they hired the Abit engineer(s) and other staffing. Prior to 2002, No enthusiast were purchasing DFI industrial (bland) based boards. Nor did they even know who DFI was as a company. It's all marketing. If DFI markets it, then people will buy it. Customer Zealotry keeps most market driven companies in business.

Look at Sony.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Remedy
Prior to 2002, No enthusiast were purchasing DFI industrial (bland) based boards. Nor did they even know who DFI was as a company.

I did. Weren't they called something like Design Flower Inc.?

 

[Peter]

DFI had their first moment of fame when they brought out the finest K6 board under the sun, in both AT and ATX flavors. That thing had everything you wanted to have back then - 2x AGP, 100 MHz FSB chipset, 3 DIMM sockets with support for 768 MBytes of RAM, UDMA66 IDE, digital voltage regulators from 1.8V to 3.5V for the CPU.

VIA chipset of course.

 

[Remedy]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Remedy
Prior to 2002, No enthusiast were purchasing DFI industrial (bland) based boards. Nor did they even know who DFI was as a company.

I did. Weren't they called something like Design Flower Inc.?

Or to that nature.

What I meant about the DFI statement was simply that the enthusiast that rave about Lan Party motherboards probably don't know the history behind DFI at all. Only the new marketing they've been spoon fed.