VIA & Matrox ... In Summary

[Zyn]

After being pissed off at my inability to hold my Matrox board at a reasonable 83Mhz bus speed I was sold into buying a brand spanking new via133a board, The Soyo 6vca, which had come to light recently because of its near-BX performance, aprrox. 94% memory performance, with its 1/4 agp divider this would be my ticket home, I got all the drivers and did everything right, blah blah blah.. even tried some of those hacks from hardocp.. Anyways, I got fed-up and the lockups and poor video performance I tried out a few others, the Abit via133a edition, and the Asus p3v4x, IN SUMMARY...

DON'T BUY A VIA MOTHERBOARD IF YOU HAVE A MATROX VIDEO CARD.

I hope my point is clear and understood, thank you.

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G400 on a G400

[dZeus]

Other notes:
Don't buy a VIA system if:
- You want low CPU utilisation on UDMA HDD's
- You don't want to go through lot's of Chipset driver installs
- You don't want a AGP implementation that needs 5 updates for each new videocard to work
- You have cards that extensively use Busmastering, like the G400 or the SBLive!
- You want very good memory bandwidth/performance
- Lots of other things I forgot

However, DO get a VIA system if:
- You think Intel chips are satanic, but are too afraid of these Intel demons to get an Athlon CPU
- You like to torture yourself at 3 in the morning.
- You want to get attention on fori like these by complaining about problems with it
- You don't want to believe this, and get it anyway, and then don't want to admit it sucks
- You are a person who has many Cyrix chips in his possession
- You've drunk way to many beers before going to the PC-supplies shop to get a new Motherboard for your PowerPC
- You need a nice square frisbee

[Damien Green]

You're all going to hate me for this but... I dunno - I've got a KA7 and apart from a few issues with chipset identification - I've had absolutely no problems with my G400 Max - in fact Quake III raised some 10 fps. Maybe I've just been lucky - but I've always found that I;ve had to work hard to get my PC running fluenty - and it seems that in every case, the hard work has payed dividends. You could try Win 2K - I know it's not really a games platform but for me it has run alsolutely flawlessly with all the latest games I've been able to throw at it - Win 98 and its siblings are flakey at best - it's true that the operating system performs better with Intel chipsets - but with Via - Win 2K has been the ticket for me.

[Zyn]

I am not even going there dude, as far as I can tell, os's that dont talk to the bios, like nt4, win2k, linux, etc.. are much better with the via boards.. but, they still suck. watch out for those demons

[Arsa]

damn dZeus, you are right!
Although, I even have W2K running on it.
No problems

[anid]

It did take me a little work to get my Epox MVP3G-M set up with my G200 SD and get the most out of it, but not much and it's perfectly stable and fast. The Abit KA7 I just got for the folks installed as painlessly as any BX board I've ever set up with the G400. They may not be "plug and play", but they ain't _that_ bad.

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"I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

[Alfie]

Just some people have studied their hardware and know how to set it up and others don't!

[Joel]

Amen Alfie.

Joel

[Damien Green]

Thank you Alfie - I'm not saying I haven't had problems in the past - but with a little perseverance I've always been able to overcome them.

[EchoWars]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

To the soapbox with this drivel...so the rest of us looking for real information can ignore it...

[Android]

Ok,

My last 4 motherboards have been Via: VP2, MVP3 (2), KX133.

I have had: Mystique 220, Mystique G200, Mill G400 and Mill G400Max... and always a RainbowRunner as well as a SB Live classic.

Guess what, NEVER EVER EVER had any problems. Just as Alfie said... some can do it, others can't.

Andrew

[The PIT]

I suppose you can say the same about cc820 motherboard with the memory hub problem. Some can do it and some can't.
Perhaps it's also that some motherboards are better than others and are more stable plus the other hardware installed is better quality.

[Himself]

Agreed, if you know what you are doing you can get just about anything to work in short order. However there are issues with paticular configurations that ARE hardware related and can't be worked around no matter how much you know. This applies across the board, not just VIA.

Having said that, I am looking forward to an DDR supporting ALi chipset for the Duron.

I think the motto should be "Don't buy ancient chipsets and expect them to work with cutting edge hardware."

[Alfie]

Must agree with the mobo and memory issues,also hardware configurations.
However,it should be strongly suggested prior to installing any hardware the end user should study and learn as much as they can about the said device know possible problems,and workarounds,etc.
For people to just start blaming Matrox,Via,Microsoft,etc.without trying to come up with possible solutions and reviewing there own setup is counter productive.
My 2c

[Sanjuro Makabe]

Hi ppl,
I am really sorry to hear that VIA boards is not working for you guys. I am using a VIA board and it works like a dream for me. I do admit though that it's a pain during the first month or so trying to find out suitable settings, drivers, bios, etc... and also to wait for new VIA 4in1 driver releases. These I know could be quite time consuming, but the fact is...after selecting the best driver, etc...combo...the board won't give that much problems at all. I am not here to say you guys are wrong or anything, coz I know having conflicting hardware is a pain in the *ss, I am just here to let others know that the VIA board isn't THat bad, just that you need some experience beforehand...thats all, thank you...



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Sanjuro Makabe

P!!!550E @ 733Mhz
ASUS P3V4X 1004.02, 4in1 4.20, AGP 4.02
128Mb PC100 C2 Ram
Matrox G400Max PD5.30
SBLive! LW3.0
WinMe 4.90.2525