Does the G400 work well with a VIA chipset?

[Osty]

So I was away on vacation and got notice that my basement was flooded with sewage. My PC died in the mishap and I am looking at whether or not I should buy a VIA motherboard or stick with a BX. Everything I've seen about the VIA shipset states that it is semi-OK. My problem is that the insurance company has told me to deal with one company and they only have the 133FSB in a VIA chipset. They don't have a BX in the 133 and don't have the new i815E yet.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Joel]

There are a few people here that believe so.

forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum3/HTML/002229.html

Joel

[Rick]

If you can grab the Asus P3V4X. It's working great with my G400 running either Win98SE or Win2000.

[CrazyBee]

NO!!!

DO NOT BUY A VIA cjipset Mobo. Stick with the BX based mobo.

Yes, there might be a "few" people on here that can get there VIA based system and the G400 to work correctly. But, that is without endless tweaking and those people are few and far between.

Just do a search on this BBS and you will see scores of posts about VIA and G400 based problems.

I have had ZERO problems with my Abit BX6 and my G400 and SB Live! aside from initial IRQ conflict. Which took a whole 5 seconds of disabling auto IRQ assignement in BIOS. That's the worst of any problem I have had with my G400 and BX mobo.

BX: GOOD!!

VIA: BAD!!

[Helevitia]

CrazyBee,

Before you go gettin' crazy on everyone, keep in mind that I have the KT133 chipset and I have had ZERO problems with my G400. I can't comment on the earlier VIA chipsets because I never used them. Maybe the thread should say, "Does the G400 work well with with ANY VIA chipset?"

Dave

[Osty]

Actually, the message is right but I'm really not interested in any VIA chipset. I'm interested in the newest 133FSB VIA chipset. I'm going to buy both a BX version and a VIA version. If the VIA causes headaches, then I'll just fall back to the trusty BX. Thanks for the input though.

Sean

[dwright]

Via KX133 chipset and G400max zero problems. Original G400max so I run at agp2x.

[This message has been edited by dwright (edited 31 July 2000).]

[RAB]

First, I've had no big problems with my G400 and a VIA chipset board and the latest bios, chipset drivers and Matrox PD 6.0.

That said, you don't have to accept the insurance company's choice of vendors. You will probably have to make a big stink, but if a BX board is what you want, let them know that a VIA board is an unacceptable alternative. If you need to, show them some of the problem threads on the forum and insist that this is not acceptable and you will only sign a release if they provide a BX board that meets your approval. Of course, if you can find a BX board at the same price as the board they suggest, you will have an easier time of it.

RAB

[The PIT]

Depends how technical you are. Via chipsets are more buggy than the Intel chipsets excluding the the new 8xx range dunno about the 815 as it's fairly new. You may find that some hardware doesn't work or works part of the time. Via chipsets tend to be less stable than the Intel Bx. The main thing about the Bx is that the chipset is mature the bugs have been ironed out.
Looking at the via chipsets that have come into the University they tend to crash more than the Bx chipsets and still have silly features like Cdrom drives disappearing then re-appearing. I think they may still be probs with tape drives and cdwriters check out there web site.
Do what crazy bee says and check out these fori and make your own mind up.

[Admiral]

Doing 89 Mhz here (1xAGP though), 650@866 Cumine, 128 PC100 SDRAM (2 years old Acorp made, plesant surprise ), MSI6163 Pro.

Wanted to get a Gigabyte 72M and a 700 T-bird, but the T-bird was an OEM Slot A and I wanted the socket version.
For the socket Cumines they didn't have good mobos and using a slotcket adapter didn't sound so good to me. So I ended up geting a 650 100fsb slot1 Cumine and the MSI board.


[This message has been edited by Admiral (edited 03 August 2000).]

[Dr Mordrid]

cking4@ford.com;

FYI all the Asus BX mainboards since the P2B (and likely other brands as well) automatically downshift the PCI bus to a 1/4 multiplier to suit a 133mhz memory bus.

In point of fact the only absent support lacking for 133mhz memory in the BX is the proper AGP clock, and most AGP boards will run just fine slightly overclocked. Also BX's can't do AGP4x, which is a red herring at this point.

Just because it's not advertised doesn't mean there isn't hidden support for lots of things

Dr. Mordrid

[Sisyfos]

I think that in the early days of BX nobody (but Intel) new of the 1/4 divider, but then some bright kid hooked up a thingamagizmosomething to meazure the actual frequency and discovered that above a certain FSB it went for the 1/4. Later manufacturers implemented the ability to choose in bios.