Interview: What happened to VIA? - Page 2

bakasan · 30th January 2011, 2:53 AM

Never had a via product that didn't have major limitations or problems when their chipset was used. I found them completely useless. It's no wonder they left the pc market.. I avoid their chips like the plague when I know about them.

SLATYE · 30th January 2011, 3:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakasan

Never had a via product that didn't have major limitations or problems when their chipset was used. I found them completely useless. It's no wonder they left the pc market.. I avoid their chips like the plague when I know about them.

But much of the time Via has been the best of a bad bunch.

Back in the old PIII days, the Via chipsets mainly suffered from RAM bandwidth problems. On the other hand, they didn't suffer from limited AGP/PCI dividers (as the i440BX did) or from silly limitations on the amount of RAM and type (i8xx). The early P4 chipsets from Intel suffered from the silly RDRAM requirement, again giving Via a bit of a boost.

Via chipsets were pretty much the best thing available for AMD chips in the Athlon and early Athlon XP period. The AMD 760 had its own share of problems, and the SiS/ALi contenders never really gained much popularity. nVidia took over with the nForce2, but then Via came back when the Athlon64 was released (mostly because nVidia's nForce3-150 wasn't very good).

Via chipsets have gotten better over time. It's just that they haven't gotten better as fast as what certain other companies have managed. Intel went from bad (i850 - not really a bad chipset, but very poor value for money due to the RDRAM requirement) to absolutely excellent (i865) with a single step. nVidia went from pretty much nothing to being the company for AMD chipsets with the nForce2, and then AMD took over that role when they bought ATI.

Garido · 31st January 2011, 4:35 AM

I've had a negative experience with a VIA related issue. It was in regards to the sound hardware on an ASUS motherboard. The drivers weren't great but it was a real pain to configure the mic and even then there was no boost option as you get with realtek devices.

not sure why a tier 1 board manufacturer goes with VIA for a high end crossfire board when they can go with realtek instead.

Nitephyre · 31st January 2011, 9:27 AM

I run this as my CarPC. Specs are 1.5ghz, 1gb ram. I have a 16gb SSD & 100gb laptop drive. It runs a 10.4" LCD off LVDS directly from the motherboard, same with WiFi.

It's running XP SP3 with Centrafuse & Garmin Mobile PC. It works quite well for what it needs to do, occasional stuttering, but nothing horrendous... it is a few years old now.

The even better thing is I got the board/ram/SSD/LCD/IR touchscreen/WiFi off ebay for about $250

31st January 2011, 4:35 AM	#18
Garido Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Parramatta, NSW Posts: 3,222	I've had a negative experience with a VIA related issue. It was in regards to the sound hardware on an ASUS motherboard. The drivers weren't great but it was a real pain to configure the mic and even then there was no boost option as you get with realtek devices. not sure why a tier 1 board manufacturer goes with VIA for a high end crossfire board when they can go with realtek instead. __________________ TRADE REP (50+) \| CAR: TOYOTA CROWN WORKLOG \| PC: WORKSTATION WORKLOG PC: Intel E6500 @ 3.6, 9600 GSO 384MB GDDR3 @ 650/1625/970, Intel G41, 4GB DDR3 1333MHz WTS: Rebel Sport Vouchers $100 WTB: Samsung SSD/HDD, DDR3 RAM, nVidia 8600GT, Dual Monitor Stand, Lenovo S10e Battery

30th January 2011, 2:53 AM	#16
bakasan Member Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 2,186	Never had a via product that didn't have major limitations or problems when their chipset was used. I found them completely useless. It's no wonder they left the pc market.. I avoid their chips like the plague when I know about them.