VIA, too much misunderstandings

eden

Champion
I wanna tell you that to me, I don't hate those guys and that the talks of unstable chipsets is plain old wives' tales. Maybe it was before but it's gotten old. I have the Epox 8KHA+ and the chipset has not done anything disappointing, rather performance. I don't know why too many hate VIA, but I do appreciate their latest chipset a lot, as I have the hardware that most people claim it crashes with, such as SB LIVE.
Why so many targetting at VIA, I dunno, but whatever was said about them has to be put in the past as I am not getting anything from those curses and am enjoying my AMD system to its fullest.

--
The other day I heard an explosion from the other side of town.... It was a 486 booting up...
 

ritesh_laud

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Good for you but many people who refuse to buy VIA (like myself) do it from experience, not hearsay. They're kinda like the boy who cried wolf: I couldn't care less if everyone and their mother says VIA's got their act together now or not, I've been burned one too many times. And judging from the prolific supply of new threads on this newsgroup of people having problems with their Athlon systems (nearly always with VIA chipsets), the company's products look as hit and miss to me as they always have.
 

kinney

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Ditto here friend. There are some issues with VIA I guess, but I have never ran in to any that were not related to my tinkering to much, I think that is also the culprit from many of these people who bad mouth the products.

Again, any company that sells alot of stuff is bound to have more mess ups or more bad apples out there. Simply put, anyone who wants the most out of AMD uses VIA, no questions asked.

With my board under XP, a clean install with no via 4in1s installed this system never crashes. Oh and I'm using the Sound Blaster Audigy strange how I havent had one problem ever with this combination and I am always a early adopter of new VIA chipsets and SB cards...
it boils down to knowing how to get things to work together.

"dude your getting a dell", is that kid trying to say he wants to stick his 'dell' in you?
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
"knowing how to get things to work together" is not always possible, I have found several (older) cards that simply would not work at all, and some newer cards that would not work with each other, on VIA chipsets. The solutions-ditch all your older hardware, remove cards that cause problems...I DON'T THINK SO! Especially if you NEED those cards!

What's the frequency, Kenneth?
 

eden

Champion
Well that's how it goes then, some are cursed, others are not.
I for one was lucky and VIA likes me!
Maybe your name has something to do with it...? :)

--
The other day I heard an explosion from the other side of town.... It was a 486 booting up...
 

tlaughrey

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I realize I'm just one user, but I've never had a problem with four PCI cards in my VIA systems. I've got a NIC, a Philips Acoustic Edge sound card, a Promise FastTrak100 RAID controller, and a USB port. I also had a SB Live! Value (before I got the Philips) and an ATI TV Wonder in there at one point, still with no problems. They've worked fine on my last three systems (KX133, AMD761, and KT266A). So I guess that's one vote for VIA.

<i>I made you look. But I can't make you see.</i>
 

Matisaro

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"knowing how to get things to work together" is not always possible, I have found several (older) cards that simply would not work at all, and some newer cards that would not work with each other, on VIA chipsets. The solutions-ditch all your older hardware, remove cards that cause problems...I DON'T THINK SO! Especially if you NEED those cards!

A perfectly valid reason not to buy via, if you have 10 year old cards....which 99% of people dont.

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!
 

Kelledin

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I've had the same experience. I can fill every PCI slot on my AMD761+VIA686B motherboard and have zero problems--even with three or four bandwidth-hungry bus-mastering cards. Same went for my VIA KX133 motherboard. My father's VIA MVP3 (Super Socket7) motherboard works fine as well.

I even have this SBLive! that everyone's supposed to have problems with. No audio corruption, no static, no lockups, nothing.

<i>If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does it still cost four figures to fix?
 
G

Guest

Guest
I agree with you. I am using a Asus PIII motherboard equipped with VIA chipset. I have been using W2k since day one, never have a crush, no problem with any hardware. According to THG, they test tons of MB with VIA chipset, they don't mention there is any problem. Maybe some people had some bad experience at the beginning, that's why they don't want to use VIA again. But VIA is very good in terms of price, and very good performance.
 

jiffy

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I agree with the VIA user. My system works great till I mess with it and the VIA out numbers the other chips by a great deal. I must not be experience enough to have problems or maybe I was lucky with my last 6 VIA boards. I get so bord over here, because it doesn't take to long to put a system together or update it or run out of money. Sometimes I'm over clocking and testing before I even have windows installed. I get jealous because someone els is having so much trouble, why do I have to be so darn lucky?
 

IIB

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note this - i have Intels 440BX Seatle 2 MOBO.
and up until this day - if i plus my ISA network card in
the system wont POST... it dosent even let me in the BIOS.
and this network card works great on a VIA Apollo chipset (cant remember which chipset - it runs Celron 800 Socket370).

and the 440BX is considerd by many (including me) as the F*CKING BEST chipset Intel ever made...
 

svol

Champion
I also have the AMD761 and the Via 686b, and my system runs very stable.
But when I first assembled it at refused to get stable, tried changing soundcards (PCI128 instead of SBLive0, changing PCI slots, using the Via Latency Patch, installing the newest version of the 4in1 drivers, notting worked to get it stable, till I saw someone posting on this forum that said that disabling the COM-ports might work, I did it and my system has been rock stable since.
I still wonder if it was a software or chipset problem.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground :eek: .
 

Kelledin

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Funny, I didn't have to do anything like that. And I actually <i>use</i> both COM ports...

<i>If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does it still cost four figures to fix?
 

AMD_cErTiFiEd

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Me too Mine is loaded to the gills
MSI kt266 pro
I use both commports (remote control and usr 56k fax)
geforce 2 GTS
pci tv tuner
aureal vortex 2
dlink 530tx
realtek 8139as
realmagic hollywood plus
And NEVER a problem

Blame the newbies not the technology
 

svol

Champion
That makes me wonder even more, I could try to enable the ports again, but I don't want to get my Windows98 screwed again because I don't have the time and willing to reinstall it again when my drivers are screwed up.
I can give you additionel information about my system and the problems I had, maybe you can explain if it was a chipset or software problem.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground :eek: .
 

varlo

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I too have the AMD761 (GA7DXR+)both com port are used for the web cam and the camera device, plus i have a Lava serial/pci card ,SB Audigy ,2 x 3C 905C nic and pci radio card(scanner).
This system is rock stable and i never had to desactivate nothing exept for tunning when I bench it.

It was probably a software problem.

Sorry for my spelling I'm french...hey I ain't perfect!
 

svol

Champion
I have the SBLive (which is famous combined with the 686b) and a generic NIC, I also use my onboard RAID controller (Abit KG7-RAID) when I first installed my system I couldn't get my RAID drivers to work in combination with the SBLive without disabling the SB16 emulation, but after it worked my system would almost crash evry 5 minutes and I couldn't play games. So I installed some new drivers... still unstable... used the Latency Patch... worked a little, but when I freed some IRQ my system suddenly got stable even without the Latency Patch, strange strange strange.

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground :eek: .
 

Kelledin

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That's something I'd very much like to see myself. Perhaps you could paste your resource configuration--both the one that Windows shows you, and the one that appears at the end of POST. Just IRQ and DMA, I suppose; the rest is just too much to paste.

Just FYI, my card load is:

Guillemot 3D Prophet DDR-DVI (GeForce DDR w/ the "fuzzy" AGP3.9x voltage)
Intel PRO/1000 fiber Gigabit nic (half-length 64-bit bus-mastering hot-plug PCI device)
Adaptec 2940 Ultra SCSI controller (half-length bus-mastering PCI card)
DPT PM2554U2 (full-length, multi-function, bus-mastering PCI SCSI RAID card with a daughterboard on a second layer. 'tis a monster)
SB Live! value (the original, supposedly VIA-crushing thing)
HP LaserJet 6L on LPT1, UPS on COM1, occasional TI-85 calculator on COM2, occasional various USB devices hooked up.

According to Intel fans, by all rights I should have problems and crashes out the wazoo. So far not one such problem.

<i>If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does it still cost four figures to fix?
 

svol

Champion
Maybe a strange question, but where/with which app can I get all the information about Windows IRQ/DMA settings so I can cut and past it (to lazy to type it over). I tried Sandra and the normal Systemcontrol app. (or whatever that is called in English I have a Dutch language version).

But I can give you my card info:
PCI 2 Realthek Ethernet card with normal reathek drivers
PCI 4 SbLive! Value (original) with LiveWare 3.0
AGP Asus V7100 with NVidia 23.11 drivers
Highpoint 370 UDMA/ATA100 RAID controller driver version 2.0.0919.
Via 4in1 drivers 4.37
AMD AGP Miniport driver
Windows98 (with all updates).

My case has so many fans that it hovers above the ground :eek: .
 

Kelledin

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Just right-click on "My computer", click on "Properties," go to the Device Manager, click on the computer at the head of the device list (may be called "Computer", "My Computer", or the name you entered for the computer during setup). You should get a screen where you can list resource settings by IRQ, I/O range, DMA, and memory range.

Another option is to run "winmsd" if you have it. I'm not sure if Win98 has it though.

You should be able to get the settings your BIOS assigns to everything if you simply hit "pause" during boot, just before it starts loading the master boot record.

<i>If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does it still cost four figures to fix?