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VIA K8T900 Chipset Launched For AMD Platform
MojoDog writes "
VIA has launched their new K8T900 chipset for the AMD platform this morning
and HotHardware.com has a full analysis with benchmarks of the new platform.
VIA is jumping into the dual PCI Express Graphics arena as well with this
offering with their 'Rapid Fire' technology, which currently only supports their
MultiChrome Dual GPU setups. However, NVIDIA and ATi will both
have to provide the required driver level support for either SLI or CrossFire
technology, which currently is not available on this new chipset. Beyond
that, from a features and performance standpoint the K8T900 looks to be a solid
solution."
Only 39 days left for the AMD vs. Intel dual core duel. Help them and sign the petition.
AMD has also published why they think that Intel will not participate...
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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The Tech Report got SLI working with this chipset. http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/via-k8t900/in dex.x?pg=5
"We were able to obtain a set of older NVIDIA drivers, revision 71.24, that don't include a chipset-based lockout for SLI. These drivers aren't new enough to support monsters like the GeForce 7800 GTX 512, but they work just fine with a couple of GeForce 6800 Ultras. Here's the K8T900 going head to head against the nForce4 SLI in SLI mode."
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
In the past I have had more trouble with Via chipsets on mobos than all other types combined (though SIS comes pretty damn close). Conflicts, bad drivers, wonky performance and incompatibilities. Further, looking on the web for solutions only ever brought me into contact with people who had the same problems, but no solutions. Via support at the same time was as responsive as the throttle on a Yugo.
I washed my hands of them and for Intel systems I'll stick to Intel chipsets and for AMD nVidia. Let someone else play guinea pig. I wouldn't buy their boards if they sold them for 10 bucks a pop.
This is what Sony and Microsoft should have done with their consoles instead of focusing on special chips.
However, with the increasing price of oil, I can't help wondering what the face of computing is going to look like five or ten years down the line. The average computer uses as much as the Mayflower worth of coal to run on any given day. Much of this is spent on wasteful peripherals we could do without, such as fancy 3D graphics cards or optical mice, but even more is being spent on processing power well beyond the needs of the average user.
Inefficiencies in microcomponent fabrication mean that a great deal of the electricity that goes into your computer is given off as heat. Techniques such as reversible or quantum computing hold much promise in the future for putting more energy into computation but today it is up to the consumer to safeguard the environment.
In a way, the argument is the same as with vehicles -- most people don't need a SUV or a top-of-the-line system but many choose to get them to compensate for inadequacies or because of marketing -- but with computers at least it is impossible to argue you are "safer" for having a faster system. Indeed, you are more likely to run viruses or worms without realizing it because you don't notice the hit in operating performance.
I've noticed that I've been holding on to computer equipment longer and longer these days. Oh sure, I have to fix a power supply here and a fan there, but besides slack engineering standards from software companies there is little reason to keep up with the hardware treadmill... and at least one compelling reason not to.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Why you need a duel? Intel has publically accepted that their dual-core design is not optimal for dual core CPUs.
The real competetion for AMD will be probably released in the first quarter of 2006. Why on earth do you need a duel? To confirm something that even intel has (indirectly) confirmed?
I've tried out the SLI configuration with two NVidia cards and saw a substantially smaller than 100% speed improvement. It was pretty difficult to set up in the first place, as these people found out.
Via has actually produced a number of quality chipsets for AMD processors.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Bite your tongue, VIA offered some of the best K7 chipsets on the market.
I bought several (pre-opteron) Athlon systems that had some serious problems. There were several high profile bugs such as IDE data corruption if you happend to be using a Creative Labs sound card at the same time (oops!). I love AMD and I'll always buy AMD chips, but I'm ruined on Via for good. OTOH, my current nVidia nForce4 is an awesome system with zero problems. I know one case != trend, but this will probably be echoed by several others.
VIA trying to say "I'll be backhhh!"?
yeah it was weak
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
...does it run Linux?"
More to the point, are there Linux drivers that support all features of this chipset?
Thanks.
+++ATH0
"Bite your tongue, VIA offered some of the best K7 chipsets on the market."
:p
No wonder intel always considered AMD a joke... some words should never be used in the same sentance. like 'via' and 'best' and 'chipsets'
AMD became a viable stable computing platform the day Nvidia started selling chipsets* for them. prior to that it was all plug and pray. Via based solutions have given me more trouble than i care to recall. True, if you pick the right via based boards you'll have plenty of service calls fixing a borked POS computer, but i'd rather people never had to talk to me again because their computer ran so perfectly
*= okay more like the day the nforce2 came out..
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
So I have a Intel 800mhz front side bus with a 2.4ghz with hyper threading enabled. What is the difference between this and AMD 's dual core? I have 2gb ddr dual channel will this AMD stuff be THAT much better? speed of surfing? No Speed of posting on /.? No
speed of booting?
speed of running programs and games?
help a brutha out yo!
I have noticed alot of people complaining about Via chipsets whenever their name comes up but after trying out their competition I wonder how much this is warranted. I had used Via chipsets in my S754 based system (Asus K8V Deluxe) with no problem but I wanted to upgrade to a board with more SATA connecters so I purchased a Nvidia N4 based motherboard from MSI. I wanted the Nvidia chipset because of its firewall capabilities and it sounded like it had alot of nice features. Right away I found out that the Nvidia IDE driver was very problematic. I found quite a few forum posts where it was recommended that the IDE driver should not be installed. I also found out that installing the firewall/ethernet software would cause problems, something that is also not uncommon. I did many winxp reinstalls and I never did get the board to work correctly. I ended up getting a budget mb from Asrock (939 Dual SataII) with a ULI chipset and have not had a problem since.
I thought the Mayflower was a sailing ship, not a steamer.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is no joke for me though. I live in Pittsburgh, Pa (mountainous) and I had a very nice P4 based Celeron 2.0 Ghz machine on a VIA chipset, gave me very few problems at all, even ran games like Call of Duty very well.
Then I proceeded to be a good brother and gave the machine to my sister who lives in Boston, Ma (Sea level). And it was crap! It started freezing after using it for awhile, the BIOS was having issues, the network card would drop connections. It felt like a PC Chips board, but it was an XFX!!!! I didn't even ship the board, I took it up personally when I visited in my car!!!!!!
So altitude is all I got at this point... (still screwy)
"the K8T900 looks to be a solid solution"
Until you actually use it that is. Or plug in a PCI card. Or memory. Or a processor. Then it crashes a lot.
You would think people would know better than to waste time with VIA by now!
"the niggardly attitude of people in this world disgusts me." Wow, racist and doesn't even realize it!
A lot of musicians are not buying nForce 4s because of the problems with PCI-Express and audio performance http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/nforce4_ tests.htm. How does this chipset compare? I want to upgrade my PC soon and go with PCI express but nForce doesn't appear to be an option and, well, VIA boards used to have so many stability problems that I can't bring myself to trust them. And Athlon64s don't run so well on Intel mobos ;)
This is one of those areas that no review ever touches, because most buyers don't give a shit about it. I've never read a review which mentions that (older?) Geforce cards look like crap compared to ATIs and Matroxes and I've rarely read a review of a graphics card or mobo which takes one line to tell the reader how loud the fan is; all you see is benchmarks because that's what sells I guess.
So? How is it for audio? Can I trust a VIA motherboard?
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggardly
english noob you are?
What is this about? Anything that involves "lockout" or "proprietary" sends me away.
Niggardly isn't a racist term, it means "miserly." The usage of in a context of slavery is clearly a troll.
I had a system based on the AMD 761 chipset, back when they still made chipsets for their processors. That system was (and still is after three years) rock solid. Via = teh suck.
That's why I use the Kx project drivers instead of Creatives. The Creative hardware is adequate for my tasks. As far as VIA chipsets. I find the MB maker to be a greater determination of weither one will have problems or not.
I agree. I have K8T800 Pro based motherboard and it's quite solid performer quality vise.
VIA has come a long way from the K6 days.
I don't buy any products that use the words "chrome" or "planet."
It's my way of flipping off the pointy-shoed, anorexic meat puppets in the strategy boutiques.
You're crazy.
Black people don't visit Slashdot.
Check out the ULI M1695 chipset for amd 939 cpus... probably it is the best 939 chipset that came out since now... it came out just 2 months ago and it seems great... not only it supports BOTH AGP AND PCI-E (you can delay your video card upgrade!!) but it also has performance near a nf4 system (no i'm not joking). If you search on google you can find benchmark of the reference board and also of an asrock board that mounts that chipset that come out some time ago. The ASROCK mb is very very cheap, around 60. I had asrock mbs and they seem pretty stable however i'll wait for another producer to use that chipset since asrock mbs are not very tweakable. In fact it looks that soon even asus and chaintech will release mbs based on that chipset. I didn't manage to get one yet however I had acer laptops with ALI chipsets (uli was previously called ali) and they were very very stable, I never see one of my acer laptops with that chipset crashing (using a NT based os naturally). BTW I hate via for the only reason that VIA MADE THE MOST HORRIBLE IDE DRIVERS I'VE EVER SEEN! They automatically scale my hd UDMA only because it spins up after being idle!! I have to reboot every 2-3 days because UDMA is scaled down... probably most people here didn't experience that problem however if you leave your pc turned on for a lot of days you'll find out. And i'd better not to talk about the via hyperion 4.50 drivers that corrupted all my partitions because they were incompatible with ati cards... VIA was so nice that IT DIDN'T WRITE NOTHING ON THEIR WEBSITE! THEY JUST REMOVED THE DRIVERS WITHOUT A REASON!!!! THANKS VIA I LOST HOURS AND HOURS TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE WAS THE DRIVER MESSING UP EVERYTHING BECAUSE YOU WROTE NOTHING! Also give a try to the new "cool" hd accelerator drivers on via website... they tested it so much before releasing that beta that it's almost impossible to avoid getting all the hd corrupted after installing them. Unless you keep your pc turned off. Oh well who would ever need a turned on pc? Not me I just call my provider by phone and emit modem sounds... About nforce... first nforce drivers were horrible (expecially when nforce2 came out) but nforce4 seems pretty stable even if a bit expensive and very hard to cool down. BTW sorry for my english I'm italian and probably most of you know how most italian make horrible grammar errors in english texts :P
VIA+Linux is just a great combination - everything is supported in the kernel, everything just works. No install hassles at all, no driver hell.
:(
I have a pair of AMD boxes with this chipset that are just super stable, super fast, and crazy cheap to build. What's not to like? The ASUS boards that I use have a fine Marvell gigE chip on the PCIe bus, and everything just hums along.
What other chipsets have real, non-backwards engineered drivers in the kernel? SIS? ULi? The VIA stuff is getting a little hard to find
everytime I see VIA mentioned hordes of people who had problems with KT133 chipsets come out of the woodwork... but to be fair the KT133 chipset was total crap.
... I have a 3ware Escalade TX7000 and when I previously had it set for raid 0 the write speeds were pretty crappy when Installed in this Via board... Since I am not using this raid card for raid 0 but am using it for Raid 1 now I no longer really care.... as long as the data continues to be uncorrupted.
it's too bad they didn't realize that and start out with the KT133A to begin with.
I have a Shuttle AK31A v3.1 (KT266A board) i have had this since 2001 running 24/7 as a Domain Controller for my homenetwork. It has given my no grief... it has been 100% stable since day one (actually building this computer w/ the AK31A was the fastest smoothist PC build I have ever had.
The only thing that kinda sucks is the PCI implementation on the KT266A seems to cause rather shabby Raid performance
blah blah blah... anyway I will wait and see, It will be interesting to see if ATI and Nvida decide to allow Crossfire and SLI to work with these boards since the article seems to indicate that crossfire and SLI should be possible if allowed by driver support?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Since the purchase of my last mobo ive been utterly frustrated by the features on offer with EVERY mobo out there. Too much of one thing i dont need jacking the price up, not enough of what i want, not even having what i want, obscure designs, etc.
Ill admit im not the average consumer, and ill always want somehting "different" from my boxes. But surely be i dont have to ditch x86 for a brand new G5 powermac, or head up to pro grade multi CPU tyan mobos just to find common sence.
Anyone familar with the PCI-e implementation for the new G5 will be aware they use standard Slots. One slot design. There are different speeds, but the slots are all the same kind. I stare at those rediculously placed 1x PCI-e slots on current mobos and i just wonder what the hell the designers are smoking. Hiding them away, putting them where theyre harmless, like in the spot directly blocked by any Dual Slot Gfx Card is fine with me, that space needs to be reserved. But when they start making full ATX boards with 1 or 2 PCI slot i cringe. I have a full size ATX mobo, and im using 3 PCI slots, and im pondering getting hardware that would mean id be using 4, and tinkering with using the full 5 on my mobo to play with some other hardware. I CANNOT find a PCI-e motherboard that gives such flexibility.
Are PCI and PCI-e slots totaly, irrevocably, electricaly incompatible? I dont know, But when i see boards like this that can offer 20 PCI-e Lanes, plus another 2 1x PCI-e lanes, and 7 PCI slots, i start wondering why the hell theres no compatibility. theres stuff all PCI-e hardware out there, and im getting annoyed by PCI-e slowly shoving my useful PCI hardware off any system i start looking at buying.
Stop me if im ranting, But isnt there a middle ground? a universal PCI/PCI-e slot or something... i dont know... but surely something to make the slow transition a lot freaking less painful on my PCI hardware.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
does this mean there will finaly be some mobo come out for 64 that don't cost an arm and a leg?
I think I just cashed out all my cool points.
Does it run OS X? ;-)
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
You're RIGHT! I've been troubleshooting computers since they've become micro, and VIA/SIS and a few others have always caused no end of problems. This report by ZONK is just a bit of undeserved PR for VIA. Not that Intel make bug-free chipsets, but at least they work. Also, VIA have never been able to outpace equivalent Intel chipset families. Simple Rule of Thumb?: Just go with Intel chipsets with Intel processors. No comment about AMD and Nvidia (though Nvidia make stable 3D chips) as I'm not too familiar with them. Everytime I work with a SIS card or chipset I cringe. Why bother with a cheap chipset? In the long run it is not worth it. What I would like to see is an SIS processor with an SIS chipset. That would really be a dog!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Terrorism is not a natural diaster.
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
Yes, must agree.
I own an Asus A8V Deluxe (KT800 Pro), and it has been rock-solid for the last year. Via's drivers were easy to install and never gave me headaches.
And this is the kicker: I use a Soundblaster Audigy with my A8V.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.