Statements such as "Via Sucks" are obviously not true, and have little utility. But, here is my take on the issue. First, I am not biased in a personal way such that I think that Intel OR AMD platforms are always the best in all circumstances. Thus, I will say that my bias is twofold: stability and compatibility. I've now built dozens of systems and these are, breifly, my observations. Disregarding the Intel 810 MCH fiasco, boxed Intel motherboards (which obviously have Intel chipsets) tend to be the most compatible, and generally QUITE stable. It should be noted that Intel has an unfair advantage, though: every PC parts manufacturer MUST make sure its parts are compatible with Intel procs, since Intel has ~80% market share. However, its well known that AMD procs generally smoke any Intel desktop proc. On the other hand, I have tried dual proc Athlon systems (Tyan MP), and found them much less stable (and fast) than a dual P3. In my opinion, stay away from dual Athlons for a while if you value stability. And, lastly, the question of Via. I am truly disappointed that AMD stopped making the 761 chipset, as I found it to be the only highly stable ddr chipset for Athlon procs. I know people will swear up and down how good Via is, but my experience is that it's hit and miss with their products. The bottom line is that their southbridge's have/are plauged with CRONIC instability and compatability issues, including 1) numerous usb issues, esp. when oc'd, and esp. in win 98 (there are, of course, a mountain of patches to fix these), 2) lots of problems with IDE/ATAPI devices. Via, for example, admits that their IDE controller is not "entirely" compatible with such popular devices as Iomega's ATAPI zip drives and numerous cd rom models. Again, there's a stream of patches and "4-in-1's" that purport to fix certain issues, though these often create new issues, such as, for example, cd drives locking up forcing a reboot (i have seen this on several boards with a via southbridge). 3) Via south bridges corrupt hard drives with certain sound cards (this is really well documented, I won't go into detail, you can look for yourself, although this issue is "mostly" resolved). On and on it goes. But, as a counterfactual, type in "Asus P4T-E problems" into google and see how many hits you get. The Asus P4t and P4t-e is reportedly the best selling concumer P4 board, and thus far, I have heard/seen/read very few issues with this board, and for that matter, any P4 board based on the i850. The fact is, Intel based boards, while slightly slower and sometimes a bit more expensive, are, on the AVERAGE, more compatible with more hadware and have fewer "issues and glitches" than Via based systems. I DONT think this is AMD's fault, I think its Via's lousy products. Anyone who says "I Have two Via boards and they're great" has to confront an awful lot of empirical evidence to the contrary. Again, go to google and type "Via southbridge soundblaster" or "via usb windows 98 issues" etc. and you start to see a defininte pattern. If you don't care about system stabilty, only speed, then by all means, get a 266a. I put together an Asus A7V266-e and though that, overall, it was pretty nice, but again, read the forums to see the host of issues that users are reporting (and I also saw, such as issues with Athlon XP's, certain memory combos, etc.). If stability is important, though, you might reconsider the purchase of a via-based ddr board. The odds are higher that you'll encounter issues. This is unfortunate, because even the 761 boards like the Abit KG7 use a Via southbridge. Maybe try an SIS board, I put one together (the ECS K7S5a) and thought is was pretty nice for a cheap board, but again, lots of others have reported issues with this model. Price is not really a factor anymore, though, with DDR so expensive. You can, for example, buy an Asus P4t-e with an Athlon XP and 256mb of Rambus for about the same price as an Asus A7V266-e with an Athlon XP and 256mb's of high quality DDR. My two cents worth.
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