What's wrong with VIA?

Via is essentially a tool of Karma - if you've done evil in your life, you WILL have problems with your computer. If, like me, you've been a saint, your via-based board will perform flawlessly, as mine has, Sound Blaster Live and all.
A few years back, I did have a Via chipset that needed a few patches installed, so I cleaned up my life a bit.
The guy that I sold that machine too did it in by inviting chicks at bars back to his place to see his BX chipset. The chipset went up in smoke as a supermodel/electrical engineer saw right through his scam and walked out the door in a huff.

Sweating like a rancid chunk of pork

You seem to have forgotten the abacus, Charles Babbages Analytical Engine and most importantly, the one that most Americans tend to forget, Colossus!

On topic, I have the KT266A with an SBLive! and have had no problems at all with it. I do believe there are some problems with the bandwidth on the PCI bus if you're planning on setting up a RAID array though (if you search the .net or wait for someone else to provide more detail on it I'm sure you'll find out a bit more info on that)

HTH

Thorin

Jiffy, how many times do I have to tell you that the VIA bugs are all related to their PCI implementation. Any thing that is on the PCI bus is affected. The thing is, there's nothing wrong with the SB Live per se except that it's a PCI hog and it increasing the likelihood of data corruption on your hard drive. It's not as obvious as you think. Of course, that's assuming you have the 686B southbridge. If you don't then you have a less major bug, that is still related to the PCI bus, again related to bandwidth.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

yeap a very good chipset gets the shaft for one or two small mistakes....everyone has bugs and there are also fixes for these bugs you can get at viahardware.com.......personally i think it is a scapegoat for those who have unsuccessful builds and problems.....(the newbies)....i have had two computers one with via chipsets and sblive and had no problems at all...one being the 686b south...but i downloaded the fix and it worked fine....
as far as the others go i think ali has really went downhill since the days of the older k6 chipsets...i wander when tehy will come out with a new beast?...because the majik sucks....and sis is climbing to the top slowly but still yet noone can beat vias performance =]

I agree, thanks for the sight. Yeah, I hear a lot about the VIA bug, but hardly do I hear anything about a fix for it. I built a few with VIA and haven't had any trouble. At least nothing I couldn't fix. I haven't needed any download. When I first started building and using a computer I did have my share of problems, but that was then and this is now.

I always bought the best mobo, going buy reviews and what can I say VIA was always on it. (At least in my time, at least the pages I read.)Hopefuly that will avoid any attacks.
There's a lot of mobo makers and I think all of them have VIA, and only a few with the other chips. What is it like 100 to 10. maybe less because I see a lot of people using 5% comparing VIA and the other chips that must be it? I'm sure if there were more of the other chips out there compared to VIA, they would get there lumps too. Personally I don't care, I just want the best mobo and fastest and I don't feel I get that on a $89. mobo



Complicated Nit Picker

I have three system using Via chipset. I did not have any problem.

What the Intel loser flamers fail to mention is that Intel has the exact same bug for PCI!

"IT AIN'T JUST VIA that's got problems with getting its chipsets to work properly with PCI.
Both the Intel 850 and the 860 chipsets have bugs that affect IDE drives which means, for example, your ATA 100+ drive only manages around 80Mb burst rate and no higher This is what Intel calls an erratum and the rest of us who try not to choke over Latin words call a bug, and never a sighting nor a pretzel.

Error five in the "erratum" sheet on Intel's own site says that both the 850 and the 860 chipsets have problems with PCI.

This limits the PCI transfer rates to 90MB/s when it should be 133MB/s, and so the external PCI disk controller is, to use a technical term we just invented, "blinkered" to rates of around 80MB/s when it's running in the desperationd derby.
"

http://www.theinquirer.net/17010203.htm

Sad when idiots dish out biased advice and don't tell you the truth. The truth is the the PCI bug is in both VIA and Intel chipsets so base your decision on other FACTS and not emotion like these chumps!

It worked yesterday!

In reply to:
The evident "problem" will occure only with PCI cards using PCI bandwidth to its maximum, with the other PCI hardware it will work just slower.


Your statement is not correct.

PCI cards using PCI bandwidth to its maximum will not have problem it will only work slower and the other PCI hardware it will work just fine.

In test there is no other problem except the transfer rate is lower. The other hardware that does not require the bandwidth will not be effected. I PCI modem perform just fine since it does not require that much bandwidth.