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