Chipset Duel - VIA vs. Nvidia nForce

msolnik writes: "Tom's Hardware has put 13 motherboards to the ultimate test in their lab. The outcome? By and large, the VIA KT266A chipset knocks the stuffing out of the Nvidia nForce 420D. True bright spots were the candidates sent in by Soltek and Soyo."

Comments

nForce vs KT266A performance

[Xugumad]

Yes, the KT266A does show an approximate 5-10% lead on the nForce, however:

• This is using an external graphics card - the GeForce 3. The nForce has a GeForce 2 MX equivalent, and I imagine that comparing the speed of the nForce to a KT266A with GeForce 2 MX would prove insightful, too.
• The nForce, IMHO, is aimed at the OEM market. It has not just graphics, but sound integrated onto the motherboard, at a significant cost saving compared to buying them seperately.
• I cannot find any reference to stability, and my experience of Via chipsets, compared to Intel and AMD chipsets, is that they are less stable and more likely to have problems (the last Via based computer I had to set up took two people 5 days to get working correctly, compared to AMD and Intel based computers which have worked perfectly from first boot up).

If you're looking for raw speed, over all other concerns, yes the KT266A is probably for you, and would go well with a Creative Audigy and GeForce 3 Ti500. However if you're looking for a less powerful system, with a still respectable specification, the nForce is likely to work out a lot cheaper.

Re:nForce vs KT266A performance

[hetfield]

One issue to keep in mind when talking about AMD/VIA chipsets is that most, if not all, AMD chipsets are meant to be reference designs only and to get new technology (like DDR) on the market before others can catch up. For example, the 760MP, which is only present on two Tyan boards, is being phased out for the 760MPX. Those Tyan boards have been in production for only about 6 months. The AMD 760 (sans MP) is being phased out because there are DDR chipsets being produced in mass quantity by VIA and SIS. Most AMD chipsets don't last very long because AMD expects VIA, SIS, and now Nvidia to pick up the ball from there with their own chipsets.

As far as stability, I've had just the opposite experience you've had. My two Tyan motherboards with VIA chipsets have worked flawlessly since I received them, but my Tyan S2462 board was RMA'd once and cursed at many more times. The Tyan S2462 (Thunder K7) and S2460 (Tiger MP) have many known problems with memory and power supply compatibility as well as high DOA rates; just search groups.google for tyan's newsgroup.

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Re:Don't forget...

[Pfhor]

Also, if you look at the actual numbers, the difference in the boards statistics was around .2 or so, from fastest to slowest. All of the boards are performing obscenely fast, yet tom doesn't seem to pay attention to his own graphs or statistics.

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q4/01112 6/ kt266a_nforce-18.html

the 5 fastest boards for Lame MP3 encoding all have times of 178 secs. No decimal points included. "The nforce boards come out on top" yeah they really are when the slowest KT266A board has a time of 179 seconds.

Or for another fun bunch of numbers, look at the flask mpeg encoding. The "fastest" fps is 21.51 (nForce board) and then there are 6 boards following it, all at 21.25 FPS. According to Tom the nForce boards "Pummeled" the competition.

Just some funny statistics stuff i noticed. Of course, Tom isn't lying per say, but it would be more impressive if he did an analysis based on cost etc. Like best board for a $600 system, $900 system, $1300 system.