Defense of Via chipsets (or Via doesn't suck)

I've been aware that Via has problems (you don't say...) and some viscious opponents. "Via's Apollo Pro 133/A is crap against the BX."
Really? Let's see, at the time Intel offered two new chipsets for the Pentium III: the 810 and the 820. The 810 was clearly aimed at low cost systems and more for the Celeron, and the 820 had a little catch that mandated the (then) ridiculously expensive RDRAM. Intel later dug itself into a deeper hole after the infamous Memory Translator Hub fiasco. Meanwhile, Via comes along with the AGP4x and ATA66 the public wanted without the Rambus requirement. Sure Via did have problems, but Intel has yet to trump the BX themselves. The 815 came close, but the limit of 512MB of RAM hurt it's appeal. I'm not saying that Intel makes a bad product usually, but I find it hard to blame Via for not de-throning the BX when Intel hasn't done it either. Via had what people wanted, minus the not-so-great memory performance.

"Stupid Via chipsets screw up with my hardware."
I'll agree on one point: How Via wasn't able to notice a problem with the 686B and the SoundBlaster Live! that plauged the KT133A, is beyond me. Creative is a major player in the sound card biz, and the only thing I can come up with for a defense is luck for Via.
Unfortunately, it's just been recently that Creative acknowledged the little problem. While Via didn't have a fix out the next day, they did something about it sooner than Creative. I've heard something about Creative apparently not following some specifications by Microsoft and Intel. If this is true, Via can't be penalized for another company's failure to follow certain guidelines.
Another "blame Via" move comes from ATI. Apparently, the Radeon seems to have some issues with Via chipsets. ATI recommends users not purchase boards with Via chipsets. I don't pretend to know the exact release of every product, but the Apollo Pro 133A and the KX133 chipsets were out in motherboards long enough for ATI to have adequate testing done with Via-based motherboards. I do know they had some mention of this beforehand, but now I can't seem to find mention of this at all. ATI probably revised the page. Regardless, that's a poor excuse when there is a large amount Via-based motherboards out. Intel users still have a few options to choose from, but AMD options were pretty limited to the 760 boards until ALi came out with the Magik1. It's pretty poor service to just blame the other company.

"How can anyone use stability and performance to describe Via?"
I'll personally refute that one. I've had 7 motherboards, 4 of which use the Via Apollo Pro 133A or the KT133. I've been running Windows 2000 for nearly a year now on a KT133 board, along with overclocking to add to the stress. Granted, having an Asus board helps, but I leave my computer on unless I'm on vacation, messing with hardware, or don't have power, and I can't say much for crashing, lockups, and other fun stuff happening frequently.
It's really bad when you run into people who have a problem with even the thought of using a Via product. I'm not advocating Via in a server environment, but the "Via sucked, does suck, and always will suck" arguements are pretty old, and are a lost cause to argue. Complaints of Via not getting things right the first time are lame. Yeah, Via hasn't been blowing us with the first round, but I'd like to know of any company that has the maximum performance of their products everytime it's released. Heven forbid Intel screws up.

via sucks

Well, I'll agree with one point, that VIA may not suck in the future, and, at the moment I am not having any probs.

I have an ASuS a7m-266 which has a via 686B in the south bridge. I havent had a real big problem...yet. But I am using pretty standard hardware. I had more problems with my 440BX than I have had with this board, and they are both made by ASUS. In via's defense, even more so, when the ali chipset was released, it had 0 support for some ati cards. WTF is that? Not until revision b did they fix that. Now I dont know if that was subject to IWILL's first DDR mobo or what, but thats pretty lame. Another problem I have with IWILL...their SIDE RAID 100 sucks big time. Sure it gets impressive performance, but thats only if you get it working. I got a promise raid card, and I havent had a hitch yet.

But, in my opinion, via's support for ... lets say ... "diverse" products is way off. Thats the only problem I have seen with them. THe creative thing was something, but it was pretty well both companies' fault.

Thats it, ive said my peace.

to tell you guys the honest truth, i have never had any problems with VIA chipsets....and they're the only one's i have ever used, that goes for ones that run AMD (KT133a) and ones that run Intel.

Hi, there!

Just wondering about something I read in the above posts. Does anyone know of any compatibility issues between my mobo (Asus P3V4X, 694x_chipset) and Ati's Radeon vid cards (including the 7500 yet to be available in France) ?
I'm currently using the Rage128ProViVo without any problem except I can't play every games I have at 1600*1200... That's why I planned to get the Radeon64DDR... My former choice is now out of the question, I'll get the Radeon 7500 instead since it is a revised and boosted version of the R64DDR.
I'm really faithfull to Ati since the RagePro (RagePro, Rage128TvOut, Rage128ProViVo,... and soon the Radeon 7500)
So, the question is: Do any of you knows of any bad issues ?

Thanx for any response !

I haven't seen the Radeon work reliably or as good as people claim. I had the chance to try out the Radeon 32MB DDR--and I'm serious when I'm saying I couldn't tell a difference between that and the Voodoo 4 4500 AGP I had in there before. In 3dmark, yeah I could, but not in game play. Please humor me as to why I would want to spend the $200 that the card cost at the time? I promptly made up my mind to get a GeForce 2MX from Hercules--which is a great card. My friend who I was borrowing it from got a new mobo and CPU, and the card performed like crap in his system. He replaced it, and it still performs like crap. He is going to get a new motherboard to see if things change, and if not, he's looking at a Kyro II. If I wasn't primarily concerned with gaming, and ATI cards didn't suck under the Unreal engine, I'd be okay with them. If I was into 2D quality, I'd buy Matrox first. For me, the GeForce 2 MX is clear enough for what I do. ATI can crow all they want about superior performance, but I'd better be able to tell in actual use from a card that is clearly from an older generation.

You cant tell the difference at high resolutions???

OMG my radeon made a huge difference over my TNT2 U. HUGE. Now I cant say I have ever owned any 3dfx cards past the monster voodoo, but for my small gaming lifestyle (Diablo 2) its great. Designing graphics, watching DVD's, word processing, math_cad, auto_cad and circuitmaker all perform really well with my ati card. I coudl have gone with a matrox, but then I would have to spend money on another vid card that can run d2 properlly. Your prolly right that I may not notice a difference in everyday things with a voodoo or a geforce. But, with my monitor, I want to have great quality display as I spent a fair amount on a monitor. I run my desktop at a really high resolution, and with a geforce3 that I had at work over the summer on a 21" trinitron (its not hte monitor) it was awfully blurry at anything higher than 1280x1024. Now, without dual head support, and programming php, high resolutions is a god-send.
But with the geforce card, there was blurry action goin on.

The only prob I have had with this board is the 4th memory slot
It would cause my pc to lock up in IE (of all things).
Once I removed the 4th stick of memory I was ok

Now up to 1.3 GB pc133 sdram and the board has been gr8

2x512
1x256

I don't know what it is with ATI but it has some problems running Unreal or UT. At 1152x856, I damn well better see a noticable difference, and I didn't. My friend can't either, and he's running 98. I don't know what's up with ATI, but that is a real turn off when that card should be walking all over the V4/V3 (its the same thing really, one just has 32MB and 32-bit color). At the time ATI's Win2k drivers were pretty poor, but that was just horrible performance. I had my 800MHz Duron running at 800MHz then, and that is certainly enough to power any game out on the market today. While I was playing in 16-bit with both cards which isn't the strong point for Radeons, there's no excuse for that poor of performance. If it wasn't for that little problem, the Radeon would be great!

Edit

1.3GB of RAM, odd combo there;)

On the original post about VIA, I have to agree. Personally, I haven't had any problems. My soyo 7VCA worked flawlessly and I was completely satisfied. I'm currently using a Shuttle AV40 which uses VIA's new P4x266 chipset and I haven't had one problem yet. This board is faaast too. Can't say I've had any problems with the 4in1's either. I ran 2k on my 7VCA and had 2k on my AV40 but now i'm running XP pro.