VIA 4in1 Drivers. What are You Using?

[paulcs]

I've heard there are problems associated with the AGP driver from the VIA 4in1 4.20 set. I'm doing some research for an article I'm writing. I'm trying to establish if people, who are *not* using the Asus P3V4X, are seeing benefits from downgrading to the 4.17 AGP driver and if they are an improvement over the 4.18 and 4.19 drivers as well.

If you have downgraded to the 4.17 AGP driver, have you seen a performance increase or stability improvements over the 4.20 drivers?

More importantly, at least for my purposes, have you seen a performance increase or stability improvements with the 4.17 AGP driver relative to the *4.18 and 4.19* AGP driver?

I believe the 4.20 AGP driver is a full version upgrade (4.00 versus 3.X for the 4.17, 4.18, and 4.19 sets). The Asus P3V4X has issues with any version above 4.17. I'm trying to establish if the same is true with other VIA-based motherboards. Is there anything wrong with the 4.18/4.19 drivers that the 4.17 AGP driver corrects?

VIA has recently posted the 4.17 4in1's on their drivers page, while stating catagorically that they are doing so because of popular demand, and that they do not endorse their use. Any help in getting to the bottom of all this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[CannyOne]

I have the EP-7KXA motherboard and am using 4.20's AGP drivers. I'm also using a different version of the IDE Busmaster drivers (one not found on the VIA driver page!?!). Because I originally installed with an ATA66 board in the system and DMA was not given as an option in Device Manager.

I originally installed the 4.17 version of the AGP. Having heard the rumors of superior performance. Later I upgraded to the 4.20 version and saw no difference in performance or stability. Previously, UT would not run, but that was do to the drives being run off the ATA66 card.

[Frankfurt]

I have the Tyan Trinity SS7 2mb cache board and am running the via 4.20 drivers. The interesting thing about that is that its the first set of drivers that have allowed me to run AGP at 2x, whereas from what ive read most other SS7 mobo users are having big problems with the 4.20 drivers, at any rate im happy with the performance

[paulcs]

Thanks guys.

I'd like to hear from as many people as possible.

I think this is valuable information, not only for my article, but for new VIA users in general. I somethings think the use of VIA chipsets can involve as much art as science. I think we'll be seeing more VIA users in the next couple of months, as the BX chipset is getting kind of old, and Intel's newer chipsets are not viable options for many people.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Himself]

I'm using 4.14 with no problems. 4.20 is a complete mess, IMO, it shouldn't be used by end users at all, they should get the final version from their mb maker.

[Alfie]

AMD K6-3 400mhz@450mhz.Epox mvp3g2,128 megs ram,g400 16megs.
Using via's 4.20,agp and miniport only,no problems,excluding turb gl.
Can get turb gl to work by deleting viagart.vxd.
This trick was posted over on Matrox hardware and appears to work with Epox boards.Supposedly Quake III also works with this workaround.
Wish others would try it,just to see what's up.
Other than that,no problems with 4.20.

Before everyone trashes their computer,here's the link from Matrox hardware.This is only a possible workaround.
Keep viagart.vxd safe in the recycle bin!
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/008168.html
Sorry to get off topic!



[This message has been edited by Alfie (edited 24 March 2000).]

[MarkD]

EPOX 58MVP3C-M + K6-2-300
4in1 v4.20, all drivers, no problems
(opposed to some other SS7 mobo users, it even runs fine at AGP 2x, without stability issues).
I have no comparison to previous drivers.

Alfie: thanks for your tip on the TurboGL, will try this out...


------------------
AMD-K6-2-300, EPOX-58MVP3C-M,
Marvel G400, 64MB+64MB(PC100+PC133), Maxtor DM40PLUS 30GB,
W98 (no SE), currently no overclocking (FSB=100)

[Bixler]

Running a SOYO SY5EMA (no plus) which has the MVP3 chipset (renamed ETEQ for some unknown reason)

Tried the 4.20 and encountered some stability problems after the install with DVD (Sorry I don't do 3d games much.) Frankly it could have been the installation that caused the problems, but after all the posts over here, I just reverted back to the 4.19 package and decided to wait rather than go through ANOTHER bug hunt.