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VIA's New PT Chipsets
TheTechLounge writes "Today VIA is announcing their new PT series of chipsets to the masses. The chipsets that make up the PT series represent the first real alternatives to Intel's chipsets for the Pentium 4 platform and aim to ease the transition to PCI-Express and DDR-II. All of VIA's PT products are covered under a ten-year cross license agreement between VIA and Intel. As expected, the majority of motherboard manufacturers will be using the PT chipsets in upcoming boards. Some of these companies include Abit, Asus, Chaintech, Biostar, DFI, EPoX, Gigabyte, MSI and Soltek. The PT chipsets cover a wide range of PCI-Express, AGP and IGP solutions for the Intel platform. VIA's new PT chipsets include the PT880 Pro, the PT894 and the PT894 Pro."
As for pricing, the PT880 Pro will be priced competitively with the current Intel 865 solutions on the market while the PT894 will be priced to compete with the current Intel 915 boards and the PT894 Pro competing with 915/925 boards.
The fact that they don't mention price until the end and in such a lackluster way it makes it tough for me to get excited about this. I really would like to see a less expensive alternative to Intel, not just "priced competitively".
Plus, the fact that the benchmarks don't show anything too exciting doesn't help either.
But competition is always a good thing, I just wish the only selling point didn't seem like "We aren't Intel".
With the cross-licensing agreements with Intel, will VIA be prohibited from transitioning these technologies into their chipsets for the AMD platform?
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
At least now that Intel has gotten over that whole RAMBUS stupidity.
Intel chip sets tend to be very stable. I have to admit that for a server I was thinking of building I am thinking very hard about an Intel motherboard with an Intel CPU. Unless the VIA is faster or cheaper what is the benefit?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The Tech Report has a more thorough review of the chipset, complete with independent benchmarks.
I wonder - and I'm not being facetious or sarcastic - is there really much of a market left for this sort of a thing?
Intel has, sadly, been having its own ass handed to it in the high-performance/gaming segment for a year or more, now. No gaming enthusiast with the slightest bit of hardware knowledge, which is apparently the PT's target market, owns a P4 system these days.
Unless this PT chipset is designed to cut costs for resellers like Dell and Gateway with their high-end machines (and I use the term loosely), I don't see it having any impact at all.
Both Via and Intel do a fairly good job of being linux friendly.
They open up specs for their on-board video stuff, sound, and network drivers.
(the intel gigabyte ethernet cards are top of the line and the PXE support makes them great cluster nics.)
Much better support then what you get from Nvidia or ATI (Nvidia closed source drivers nice, but they are still closed. Also their support for motherboards were especially subpar... until the kernel developers when thru the huge pain of reverse engineering them.)
If you don't need the 3d power a i915 chipset should be very nice for a regular desktop, and Via's Mini-itx are nicely supported and their "
"padlock" hardware-based random number generator can make VPN's that are faster then the fastest Pentium 4 or Opteron proccessor. Also their mpeg2 decoder makes the mini-itx suitable for a mythtv frontend dispite it's slow CPU.
All in all Via and Intel do a decent job.
Just avoid CHEAP Via motherboards and you do great. Get the nicer Asus (don't waste your money on the 'enthusiests' boards) stuff and it's rock stable.
some nice Unix-building advice:
http://cr.yp.to/hardware/advice.html
Build a GREAT box for less then 700 bucks. It's suprising how high-quality stuff has gotten cheap.. as long as you know what to look for.
VIA's AMD-based chipsets are among the most Linux-friendly chipsets you'll find. In fact, they're far more Linux-friendly than nForce chipsets. Why should their Intel-based chipsets be any different?
The next machine I build will have a K8T800 Pro-based mobo, as I trust VIA to make a Linux-friendly chipset more than anyone else.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Here are some more sites covering it... all about the same content, really:
viperlair.com
hardocp.com
techreport.com
thetechzone.com
tweaktown.com
thetechzone.com
hothardware.com
hexus.net
pcper.com
legionhardware.com
thetechlounge.com
bigbruin.com
The infamous bug with nvidia was due to nvidias cards not being AGP 2.0 standards compliant in terms of watt usage. Via blamed Nvidia and Nvidia blamed VIA. Intel owned 95% of the market then and Nvidia only tested the geforce with Intel boards. People assumed VIA was just unstable compared to Intel as a result and some still believe it today.
Vendors like Dell and IBM stuck with Intel as a result.
Also there was a scam 4 years ago when the athlon boards including defective capacitators that would explode. Most cheaper motherboard makers prefered VIA/AMD solutions due to the cheaper price, also picked the bad capitators. Consumers assumed it was VIAs fault stuck with Intel. A few them made it into Intel boards too including IBM's desktop line but the press was not big to pick that up.
Finally in 2005 many business users are seeing through the BS of the early days and VIA is fine.
VIA is not that bad anymore and nvidia works fine with their boards now.
http://saveie6.com/
I second that. Had some trouble with some older VIA AMD chipsets and since then never bought VIA again. In particular on the board for my first Athlon the Realtime Clock would jump back and forth under load (under linux that is).
There was a patch that workarounded it but that one broke other things (like NFS support, USB support and other stuff that depends on timing).
I'll stay away from VIA for my linux boxes unless I come across a board that has been timetested long enough under linux to be trusted.
The last few Via chipset motherboards I have had, have had deadlock issues with the IDE bus. Capturing live video at mpeg2 speeds would cause a random lockup that required a hard reset to resolve.
When trying to figure out why, I ended up trying a third party (DFI) IDE board to see if that would resolve the issue. It did not, which suggests that the problem is actually with something at the motherboard on the Via Chipset. I ultimately decided to move to NForce2 boards for my video work.
I would hop that these issues have been addressed with the new Via chipsets, but I think it would be worthwhile to run some extended testing before you can't return any board with the chipset on it.
-Rusty
You never know...
The infamous bug
"The" infamous bug? Believe me, it takes more than one infamous bug to gain a well-deserved reputation as a purveyor of crap.
I hit the one with the Soundblaster 128 + Via motherboard. Turns out Via's PCI was shit, and while the Soundblaster 128 did happen to really whale on the particular way in which it was shit, you could randomly lock the system up (completely unstoppably) with any high PCI load.
Mind you, this isn't their first PCI chipset. PCI had been out for years; we were just starting to see computers coming out that had no ISA connectors at all.
That motherboard, as I recall, also had memory issues.
Almost everything I've owned has been Via because I've been a poor college student or worse, and almost everything I've owned has been crap, except the Asus based computer I have. I bought this cheap laptop with a damned Via chipset, and it is the only laptop (even in the cheap-ass class) that runs so hot it burns you when it is idling. Yup, it's the chipset. I wish to high heaven I could replace it.
"Not Via", after extensive experience, is now my #1 criterion when buying new computers. I don't even care if they've improved; they screwed up so many times over such a long period of time in such stupid ways that it has to be systematic; unless they restructured if they've been "good lately" it's either luck, or simply that you haven't heard of the errors their stuff has yet.
on the dreaded KT133A chipset which could never be stabilized, after burning through two such boards, and constantly having locks and IDE problems, I went for the a much cheaper SiS based board and suddenly that was the first Athlon board I ever owned which ran totally stable. (and still does after almost four years and 3 processor upgrades)
Via is a no buy criterion for me everytime I see something from Via I try too look for other options. Last time that was, was a few weeks ago, when I ditched my long term plans of waiting for Via to bring out a decent C3 combo and went for a Mac Mini purchase for my silent server needs.