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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."
I really used to like AMD a lot more before I read that...
Really AMD has faster CPUs, that use less power, and cost less than Intel. Do they need snotty marketing?
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Really? That's odd...I've had the exact opposite experience. Almost every nVidia chipset board I've seen or touched has been flaky as all hell and completely unstable...Via has been a dream every time in the last 5 years. In fact, we build probably 20-30 computers a week at my shop based on the AMD chip and the Via chipset. Takes almost no effort to do the install and have them stable.
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?
Open source is not just about the source code itself (for hardware), it's just as much (if not more) about availability of documentation so that drivers may be written and maintained. OpenBSD has had several campaigns (as well as ongoing work behind the scenes) for releasing documentation to hardware, and this has been quite successfull. However, the Linux crowds support of this has been lackluster. What good is nice open source applications if you have no current hardware to run it on?
Via has actually produced a number of quality chipsets for AMD processors.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I've had similar experiences: VIA being stable and nVidia being crap.
That said, I don't think the manufactuor of the chipset has as much to do with the mobo manufactuor's experience with the specific chipsets that the mobo is based on. I'm guessing that most VIA K8T900 boards will kick ass since they are pin for pin compatable with the K8T890 which mobo manufactuors have been using for awhile now.
Really AMD has faster CPUs, that use less power, and cost less than Intel. Do they need snotty marketing?
Well, maybe not snotty, but they need marketing. Intel still has a huge chunk of the market and perhaps more importantly, the mindshare outside the geek realm. Ask some of your non-technical friends what CPU they are using, and I would bet dollars to donuts they either know it is Intel, or don't know. After that, ask them if they know what AMD makes....
Seperate cores aren't important in graphics because all the difficult stuff is done in parallel.
Most of the die is already full of memory and other stuff not pixel pipelines but if they wanted to they could scale the pixel pipelines to an increadible degree.
The r520 is I believe a 24 pixel pipeline card so that's the amount of simultaneous operations it can process at once.
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.
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)
Oh, come on. You can't blame the piece of shit that was the Creative Labs Live! on the motherboard chipset. I mean, really, those drivers were a disaster waiting to happen. Do the research. Creative sucks. They refused for years to make functional drivers and follow standards. Now there is a company that I will never buy from again (actually, I got a Live! given to me, and was happy when it caught on fire and I was forced to buy a real card. No, the fire wasn't Creative's fault, but the shitty drivers sure as hell were.)
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