VIA chipset issues?

[Mekadave 0]

I've read people express various opinions on VIA chipset motherboards, including the well-known issue of conflicts between the chipset and Soundblaster cards (I was under the impression that the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers fixed this. Is that correct?). I was wondering if there were any other known issues that I should be aware of, especially with the Asus A7V333R motherboard, and other KT333 boards?

[Brian Frank 0]

I ran a VP6 with a SoundBlaster Live Card and no issues. The only PC issues I had were related to piss-poor IBM drives that crap out. But anyway...I've used plenty of Via based boards and not had a problem. If you're still a bit nervous about using a Via board, you can try The ALi Magik 333 DDR chipset or an nForce board. I love the nForce, and I've heard mixed results with the ALi chipsets. I may have to try them out in the future, but for right now, I'm a little wary of them as they had some pretty bad chipsets in the old socket 7 days.

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

I run the asus board you mentioned (A7V333R) with the new via drivers and a soundblaster Audigy. Works 100% and it worked when I have an SB Live and an asus a7m-266 (that was amd/via chipset though )

[pmistry 0]

I am put off by VIA now, I use one of their older chipsets VIA KX133, it has issues with the SB Live! (fixed this with new SB Live Drivers), problems with stuttering speed, (fixed with PCI Latency), slow disk access, (fixed with 4-In-1), etc, etc.

 

I have been able to fix most of my problems with VIA, but really it is quite annoying. To rely on a third party patch to fix some serious PCI issues is a bit alarming. VIA should fix it, but the VIA board also exhibited some incompatibilites with an ATA-100 card I wanted to put in. I tried putting this in an Intel chipset motherboard and off it flew without a hickup.

 

Since the KT333 is a lot newer than my chipset you may not have problems yet but hey new hardware always brings up new problems and usually VIA chipsets suffer the most. For Athlon, consider AMD chipsets or even SIS might worthwhile, Nvidia seems quite stable too. ALI might be finnicky so I would hold off on that. Its too bad cuz VIA chipsets always have the best features and sometimes you just wanna spring for them. For example that Asus board you want has Firewire and RAID along with USB 2.0.

 

 

I had a thread on VIA KT333 boards awhile back, search for it.

[ECO 0]

Quote:

I've read people express various opinions on VIA chipset motherboards, including the well-known issue of conflicts between the chipset and Soundblaster cards (I was under the impression that the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers fixed this. Is that correct?). I was wondering if there were any other known issues that I should be aware of, especially with the Asus A7V333R motherboard, and other KT333 boards?

Can you specify these issues? I am having serious issues with my computer and I have a VIA chipset and SoundBlaster Live! card as well.

[clutch 1]

Via still has the worst ability to make a decent memory controller. Every application that's bandwidth hungry proves it. This is the case with both their AMD and Intel CPU offerings. Also, their USB controllers have been flaky depending on the generation (I got stuck with one on my SiS board that wouldn't detect my MS KB when using the USB connector alone) and they are legendary for compatibility issues. If possible, consider the offering from another vendor like nVidia or SiS (w/o the Via USB controller, of course ).