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**GT98** · 2 June 2002, 20:18

Originally posted by BuddMan
Well, if you do get a soundcard, go for a Hercules Gaming Theater XP. That's what I will be putting in my new system. I've heard good things about their drivers, esp. in XP.

I had one of those....I got rid of it after the driver problems with it in XP at first...you should have seen gurm kick ass on the Hercules boards LOL....

**rugger** · 2 June 2002, 22:38

I suggest you get rid of the cheap raid.

Cheap Raid has big problems with, umm, just about everything due to the exceptionally poor IDE controllers they use. Your sound card problems would likely disappear if you got rid of it.

Ahh, I have fond memorys of the LX and BX IDE controllers. Nice, fast, stable, and works with everything

**rugger** · 2 June 2002, 22:42

And, despite what the computer industry you want to beleive,

You current computer is DAMNED fast enough already, and upgrading to the BEST intel chip will only give you at most a 50% improvement.

Its nothing to sneeze at, but is it really worth your money yet?

**DGhost** · 2 June 2002, 22:55

also, its a sis chipset. that right there will cause you all sorts of problems, mostly 6 months to a year down the road.

SB Cards have issues. period. mine seems to be working well, and i am tempted to pick up an audigy sometime to test, but they are always pains in the asses.

the KG7-RAID on the other hand... i've heard a lot of people having problems with it, which is amusing as my girlfriend has a 8K7A+ that works wonderfully fine... even with an SB Live in XP.

and yes, highpoint is cheap raid with crappy IDE controllers. Promise has a much better IDE controller, and better drivers, etc.

**rugger** · 2 June 2002, 23:22

Originally posted by DGhost
also, its a sis chipset. that right there will cause you all sorts of problems, mostly 6 months to a year down the road.

SB Cards have issues. period. mine seems to be working well, and i am tempted to pick up an audigy sometime to test, but they are always pains in the asses.

the KG7-RAID on the other hand... i've heard a lot of people having problems with it, which is amusing as my girlfriend has a 8K7A+ that works wonderfully fine... even with an SB Live in XP.

and yes, highpoint is cheap raid with crappy IDE controllers. Promise has a much better IDE controller, and better drivers, etc.

No, promise controllers are just as cheap and nasty as the highpoint controllers. Maybe not quite so bad, but still awful controllers. And, Ug, an abit board, should I say more

On VIA boards, you are better off just using the chipset controllers only, and using SCSI if you need more expandability, if you want it to live happily with an SB-live or audology card. I learnt this the HARD way, with a CMD IDE controller, which could suck a housebrick through a straw.

My sb-live works fine, I just had to give up the idea that I could use a cheap IDE controller with it. Other sound cards may work better with cheap IDE, but I haven't seen it yet.

**DGhost** · 2 June 2002, 23:50

Originally posted by rugger

No, promise controllers are just as cheap and nasty as the highpoint controllers. Maybe not quite so bad, but still awful controllers. And, Ug, an abit board, should I say more

On VIA boards, you are better off just using the chipset controllers only, and using SCSI if you need more expandability, if you want it to live happily with an SB-live or audology card. I learnt this the HARD way, with a CMD IDE controller, which could suck a housebrick through a straw.

My sb-live works fine, I just had to give up the idea that I could use a cheap IDE controller with it. Other sound cards may work better with cheap IDE, but I haven't seen it yet.

my experience with promise controllers is that they tend to at least have better drivers than highpoint (quite obvious in XP as Microsoft implemented stricter device verification, and highpoint drivers are quite... odd... in XP), and generally more compatable than VIA IDE controllers... maybe not the best out of IDE (Intel still makes the best, imho), but good enough... not as good as the 3ware or adaptec stuff for raid, but still good...

problem i have seen with via boards is just that VIA has a really shitty implementation of a lot of things, IDE controller and PCI host bridge included. their IDE controller works nicely on it, other peoples tend to fail horribly. this also tends to induce sound card problems as well. or perhaps its the fact that VIA's design guidelines for the chipsets are quite lax, and board makers can mess with timings in fashions that break other things. who knows.

I am looking forward to the Hammer because of two things... 1) AMD will be releasing a chipset for it, and supporting it 2) the memory controller is built into the processor, completely eliminating any performance gain that VIA gets from their chipsets.

the CMD chipsets... horrible... horrible... *scream*almost as bad as abit boards...

**rugger** · 3 June 2002, 00:06

I know that VIA boards are not particularly good, but cheap IDE controllers are just asking for trouble no matter what system you put them into.

I would personally use a 3ware controller if I needed IDE raid. (or use software RAID under linux)

As for CMD, yep, I know about the screaming part. Utterly useless, does not work with CD-ROM drives in DMA, causes crackling problems with the Sb-live. The bios on the card is utterly useless. (so useless, I removed it) And the drivers leave much to be desired.

**Sasq** · 3 June 2002, 06:29

Well so far this sis745 chipset (2 days mind you) has taken everything I've thrown at it.

**GT98** · 3 June 2002, 06:57

Originally posted by Sasq
Well so far this sis745 chipset (2 days mind you) has taken everything I've thrown at it.

Give some specs of what your running there Sasq

**Sasq** · 3 June 2002, 07:13

XP 1800+,
2x256MB generic pc2100
80Gb deskstar(sp?) 7200rm drive
g550
live 5.1
mobo -> k7s6a http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/k7s6a.htm
400W generic atx psu (2.03)

Thats more or less the generic stuff, still going through all the testing though. But so far I havn't noticed anthing serious

Dan

**Nuno** · 3 June 2002, 07:17

its a sis chipset. that right there will cause you all sorts of problems, mostly 6 months to a year down the road

No. Actually that would happen with a VIA chipset. The SiS 735 actually reminds me of the golden BX era. It´s really a trouble-free and compatible chipset. I´ve thrown to my ECS K7S5A a Thunderbird 900, a XP 1600+, SDRAM, DDR-SDRAM, a SB Live!, a SB Audigy! (with firewire), a KyroII 64 Mb, a Creative GF4 Ti4400, a cheap NIC card, serial external modem, pararel Iomega zip, Direct paralel conection, a 40 Gb Seagate Barracuda IV ATA 100, a 13.5 Gb Maxtor ATA 66, a USB expansion bracket (from Asus!) four usb devices operating at the same time (HP printer, Epson scanner/Fuji 2600 digital camera, RCA cable modem, Microsoft intellimouse explorer).

No 4-in-1 drivers every week to correct a bug and expose another. No broken IDE. No broken PCI. No broken usb. No Sb Live issue. No Nvidia infinite loop error issue. Every time things worked out as expected. True plug-and-play

Much better than I could say from the two Via chipsets I experienced (KT133 and KT133A) from Asus and Abit. I NEVER managed to have a 100% stable and trouble-free system with VIA chipsets.

So I can only recomend SiS chipsets over VIA any day. There´s much more to a chipset than 15 fps on quake3 fastest at 640x480x16...

**rugger** · 3 June 2002, 07:26

Damn you

Your making me nostolgic again!

If only intel could release another BX

They were really solid workhorse machines. Never complained, or even twitched.

**Technoid** · 3 June 2002, 08:17

I'd like to point out that I had have really weird experiences with BX bords.....

And they were not funny

The Board maker has a big big influence on stability......

**Pace** · 3 June 2002, 08:57

Only problem I've ever had with BX was a busted FDC, everything else was perfect. Oh to have a P4 on a BX chipset

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