Experience with VIA chipsets?

[Kasrkin Guard]

I never hear a whole lot on experiences about VIA at all, however I believe I understand why as to what they offer compared to other chipsets (nVidia, etc). So if anyone has had any experiences with VIA, please share. As mentioned previously, my Athlon XP gave out for whatever reason (something burned, but most components work thankfully), so I have been looking into replacements for the CPU and mother board as I cannot spare much for a whole new PC right now (has to be AGP).

[Kougar]

There is nothing wrong with VIA really, they just seem to have given up trying to innovate and are simply following about 3 steps behind other chipset makers in features/performance. But they'll easily beat most others prices to make up for it... and I'd still rank them above SiS.

[Bio-Hazard]

I've run several VIA chip sets, at one it (begining of the XP's) they were the OC'ing chip set to have, but that was some time ago (before the NF2's). I still running a VIA chip set in one of my A64 systems and it does fairly well in performance and OC'ing, but not as well as my NF4. As a matter of fact, the VIA board just has a faster feel to it at stock setting but fall behind after the board is OC'd a bit.

These are the specs on my A64 system with the VIA chip set and AGP video slot.

Cooler Master Centurion 530, Abit AV8, AMD A64 3200 (Winchester), OCZ PC3200 EL Gold (2x512), PowerColor 9800Pro, WD SATA 80 Gig, Lite-On CDRW, TT TWV 500w, KDS Ultra Flat 19" CRT.

[Scott]

I had several VIA chipsets but they had issues with graphics performance so I bailed on them when nForce 2 came out.

I do fix machines all day long though with their chipsets, Compaq/HP still use them alot.

[mousiness]

and they SUCK lol, Id rank them above SiS because ive used a lenovo series pc with that chipset and ive also used an averatc pc with SiS chipset and all i have so say is that they're CRAP, back in the days of early pc enthusiasts (1997-200) they were pretty popular though, not anymore

[Das Capitolin]

VIA was a major player from 1999-2003, which was when AMD was really pushing Intel. Most VIA chipsets are for AMD CPU's, but there are several that supported Intels. None of their systems were ever hot, except for say for maybe the KT-133/A and KT-266/A series, which were cutting edge.

Lately they have gone the way of ECS: plain and bargain.

Also, as a note, back in the day 98-2000 there were several applications that would not run on a VIA chipset, only Intel. I tried and failed many times to work around it, but somehow the software wouldn't support it.

[tomato]

I was one of those adopters of the VIA chipset during that time period, and I can't say that I wasn't happy with it. It was an ABIT mobo (can't remember the model #), and it performed good enough for me, and allowed me some nice OC if I remember correctly...

Nowadays, it's all about the NForce chipset it seems, and VIA has fallen by the wayside.

[werty316]

I used to have a KT266 and KT400 board and never had problems with them but the nForce chipset is much more superior to anything VIA currently has.

[DragonMaster]

I have had the experience with 3 VIA-based systems and they are the only ones I can tell they never crashed.(KT266, MVP3C, 133Z) They aren't the best performing, but are very stable. (Apart from that I used Intel and ATI)

[XJnine]

I've had a few VIA chipset motherboards and I actually still have a few running here at the house. Some have been a bit flaky and some have been rock solid. I can't speak for their current lineup because, like others have said, they've fallen behind on the technology curve and I haven't purchased any of them in quite a while. I used VIA chipsets for socket 7, Socket A, and S478 systems. I think the main problem was always their 4 in 1 drivers. There were numerous problems with installing them or just plain bad versions that were released.

One thing that they make do which was useful for me was a P4 chipset that could use SDR or DDR. It had slots for both on the motherboard. Very handy when you've got an old system laying around and you don't feel like buying new (at the time) DDR for it when you've got a ton of SDR ram sitting around. I could always swap the memory out for DDR when I freed some up by upgrading another computer that used DDR. The performance wasn't all that great but how fast does a computer need to be to run Internet Explorer?

[markkleb]

up to last year most of my stuff was VIA. Their nano stuff is pretty fun to play with. I built my Lego comp (my avatar) and Aquarium with a VIA Epia PD mobo.

[XJnine]

I totally forgot about their Epia stuff. I've always wanted to mess around with a little system like that. Do something to replace the system I had in my car. How is the performance on those things?

Maybe someday...

[markkleb]

the PD I bought (probably 1 or 2 years ago is good for surfing or to show off)

But the new ones are really fast and use DDR2 mem, Sata and Real CPUs,
http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/78_55/products_id/489

I have to say I am real happy with my Via PD. Its been in several comps banged around the closet, wet from spilled water and it works as good today as the first day I bought it.

They are comming out later this year with a even faster board. Il look for the link. Mark

[XJnine]

Hmm.. Trying to figure out the logic behind including 4 LAN ports and 2 serial ports on that motherboard. Weird....

[GIBSON]

Hmm.. Trying to figure out the logic behind including 4 LAN ports and 2 serial ports on that motherboard. Weird....
I'd say because it's likely to be used in some kind of HTPC setup, beats me otherwise :)

[Bio-Hazard]

I really don't understand why people have problems with the VIA chipset, my older A64 runs a VIA chipset and clocks just about as high as my NF4 board does. And give the same ram and CPU it feels quicker than the NF4. I've given the system to the wife now, mainly because it's so stable and error free. I'd still be using it today if it had a PCI-e vdeo slot..............;)

[DragonMaster]

Some other options could be more interesting for those who want a mini-ITX mainboard for other things than HTPC(The VIA is mainly for that, TV outs, hardware video encoders, 7.1 sound, etc.), some are sold with Pentium Ms and maybe even Turion 64. But we're still OT.

The problem with VIA chipsets is that a lot of them don't perform very well(Bugs) and don't have a lot of features. For example, the MVP3 needs to have some BIOS options tweaked to get sutter-free sound. Then, there are other problems causing noise in the sound output on that chipset (Again, it's in the BIOS)

[Kougar]

Dragon, I got plenty of noise with the sound output on my Intel 865P board using a realtek chip. Most lower end chipsets don't have build in sound anyway though, it's handled by some other company's sound chip.

The ASrock 775Dual VSTA board I bought for a Core 2 Duo rig uses only VIA chipsets. Anandtech has done all sorts of reviews with it, and today just published another review comparing DDR333, DDR400, DDR2-533, and DDR2-667 memory performance using only this exact motherboard.

VIA is as of late seems to be a rock solid chipset and while the performance on this particular board was noticeably behind that of any other chipset, it's still a solid performer nonetheless. And it says something their chipsets can be combined to roll AGP/PCIe and DDR/DDR2 all into one motherboard....

[nam-ng]

Link to >300,000 VIA chipset experiences from about '98 -> '06 for all windows versions and multiple Linux distros. (http://www.google.com/search?hs=YNY&hl=en&q=VIA+motherboard+latency+problem&btnG=Search)

[XJnine]

I totally forgot about that PCI latency problem they had. That was a big fiasco for them...

[DragonMaster]

Dragon, I got plenty of noise with the sound output on my Intel 865P board using a realtek chip. Most lower end chipsets don't have build in sound anyway though, it's handled by some other company's sound chip.

Sure, mobo codecs are noisy.