How stable is an VIA/Athlon compared to BX/P3

[Michel]

Hi, i wanted to buy an P3-933 with an Abit BX133, but after i saw the pricedrops starting next monday of Athlon processors i don't really know what to do. An P3-933 costs about 950 Dollar here in Holland, but an Athlon (thunderbird) 1 GHZ will be 635 Dollar!!! That's an whopping 315 dollar difference!

I once installed an CelII 566/G400/Via (abit VA6) combo an found out that the order of installation is very important (first via4in1, then agp, then videocard, then sound). I had alot of troubles the first time when i just randomly installed the drivers. That system is just not as stable and fast as my current Cel300@450/BX combo.

I know that with an BX board you CAN randomly install drivers without problems.

But the main question is how is the stability overall between Athlon/VIA and PIII/BX.

My heart says go for the PIII (garanteed stability), but my mind (looking at the prices) says go for the Athlon.

I really don't know what to do now....

[merchant2112]

i dont have a k7 / via board but i do have a k7 /amd irongate (msi6167) / commpared to my abit bh6 it is more stable. i noticed i lot les reboost due to windows 98 errors. once i switched to win2k i have not had to reboot or fix things due to stblity problems. if you can wait i would go for the amd760 chipset due out real soon (q4 the 760 boards are due out) but i heare a lot of good things about the second gen via boards as well. if i were not personally waiting for the amd 770 chip set (also due out q4) a dual cpu chip set and the tyan dolphin board ....i would consider the arus board with the jumpers for overclocking.

[Pace]

I think with a heavily configured system you'd run into some problems with VIA. I suppose you've heard of the GeForce problems a various other little problems which have plagued the Athlon in the past. Maybe the new VIA chipset fixes everything but I've got no experience with Athlons at all. Post what hardware you want to run with your board and see if anybody else has got similar hardware or experiences.

Paul.

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[Michel]

This is my current setup, i am going to replace the motherboard,ram,case and 1 harddisk. (old pc is going to be an file(read mp3)/internet server )

Abit BX6 with cel300a@450, 128 mb ram
G400MAX (soon? to be replaced by G800 Fusion Ultra Plus MAX )
Diamond MX300
Promise Ultra66
Maxtor diamondmax40+ 30 gb
Maxtor diamondmax6800 20gb (to be replaced with an Maxtor diamondmax40+ 30 gb (for raid setup)
3com networkcard
36x-cdrom
6x32x DVD
8x4x32 Plextor Rewriter (moving to inet-server)
ISA Teles ISDN (think i'm gonna move this one to the inet-server if its possible)

So this is what's gonna be in the Athlon or PIII system.

I just read the latest prices at SharkeyExtreme, and there the PIII 933 and Athlon 1000 weren't so much apart. So i problably wait a few more weeks for the prices to drop to that level here in Holland.

[This message has been edited by Michel (edited 11 August 2000).]

[Helevitia]

I was gonna write this long story, but I'll make it short. I just bought an Asus A7V w/ a thunderbird 700. I have overclocked it to 900 and I have ZERO problems. end of story.

Dave

A7V
t-bird 700@900
G400
SBLive!
HP 9300i 10x4x32 CD-RW
Samsung DVD
Zip 250
Quantum UDMA/66 HDD
3COM Etherlink XL NIC
Intel Video Capture card(ISVRIII)

Dave

[rinkol]

I have both an Athlon 700 on a kx133 motherboard and a pair of celeron systems (bp6 and bh6). All of these dual boot w98/w2k. The Athlon system was actually the least trouble.

While Via can be criticised for being slow in getting its drivers up to snuff, I am not aware of any significant remaining problems.

While the bx chipset is efficient, it is showing its age.

Robert Inkol

[erectus]

The disadvantage of the driverinstallation is very little.. Only once a month (for me).
And you can choose to make an imagefile after u installed the default drivers..
I got a P3V4X with a 733/133 Slot1 . Win98SE is running for like 8 days now with no reboot.. Lotsa multimedia/games/inet... no prob..
I trust VIA!!

Groeten uit Eindhoven

[Technoid]

If you get an 900+ Athlon CPU i advice a BIG PU!
My 300W is croaking in my system and i'l either hawe to get an bigger or power all of my fans on a separate PU.

[EchoWars]

Heavily configured? OK...try this..

54Gb Striped RAID
G400 Max
10/100 NIC
DVD
CD-RW
Aureal SQ-2500 Superquad soundcard
On USB- Two scanners, printer, mouse, USB hub, J-Stick, modem...
Keyboard with custom keys loading at startup and fingertouch Glidepad
256Mb RAM
P3700E@933EB

All on a VIA Apollo Pro 133a

Only real problem I had was...my Turtle Beach Quad soundcard refused to co-exist with the Promise RAID card...traded even-up with a friend for the Aureal SQ-2500 which went in no prob (wierd, 'cause almost the same card...kinda...)

Now...no more bullshit about VIA having problems with 'complex setups' and the KT133 is supposed to be a better chip than the 133a...so if you know what you are doing, go for it!

[Alfie]

Asus a7v mobo(Via kt 133 chipset)
fsb set to 105 mhz.multiplier set to 8x,
Duron 600 @ 840mhz.
No problems!
So far this set up is very stable.
g400 is the video card.

[Grego]

I have had no problems whatsoever, dvd, games, seti@home - you name it everything is ok.



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System:
Asus A7V rev. 1.01b
AMD Thunderbird 800@800
SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
Matrox g400 MAX
LG Flatron 795FT 17# monitor
IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
Pioneer 103-s dvdrom
Win98 2nd edition
directx 7.0a