Since I ranted months ago about my love of VIA chipsets then took Subs advice and changed my mobo I am now not a fan and prefer AMD with AMD chips - A7M266 etc. So I spread the word but can't explain it!!!!!
Why are VIA chiset mobos slower for PCI IO than new AMD or INTEL ?????
Help please
TB
Help me with a reason why ......
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Funktastico
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Which VIA chipset did you use to have?
I know KT133 sucks big time but KT266a is supposed to be pretty good compared to AMD chipset right?
Toni L.
http://www.mp3.com/NativeAlien
I know KT133 sucks big time but KT266a is supposed to be pretty good compared to AMD chipset right?
Toni L.
http://www.mp3.com/NativeAlien
Nope, KT266A performs poorly too. 
Already tested it with Creamware, usual scary bad PCI performance typical from VIA. Don't just look at benchmarks, especially just for quake (agp) and cpu speed.
As for your reason, this comes down to the actual supporting architecture of the chipset. If you look at any VIA chipset before KT266 and compare it with an Intel diagram, the difference becomes very clear.
Now, they have the same theoretical PCI bus throughput, the main difference is that Intel designs and makes CPUs, Chipsets, and motherboards based on these items. They can test their CPU, with their chipsets, and then make a stable, reliable motherboard that they can then give to their suppliers to help them also make stable reliable motherboards. Contrast that with AMD, who makes excellent CPUs (and, when forced, pretty nice chipsets), but doesn't make motherboards, and VIA who makes chipsets for AMD and Intel, but doesn't make motherboards (<a href=http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardware ... 849/1/>but looks like they might have to start</a>), so what you end up with, when you get a VIA motherboard, is a chipset by one company who doesn't even make their own reference platform for a CPU they didn't make, and it ends up being a compatibility fiasco from the start.
The main difference that keeps VIA behind here for our purposes seems to be the poorly chosen PCI Arbitration scheme, PCI Latency Timer, and perhaps even a North Bridge that can't deal with, or isn't optimized, for heavy PCI traffic. (hey, the majority of internet 'benchmark' sites tests almost exclusively game performance and a few office benchmarks, so optimizing for AGP/CPU makes it look better!)
What generally isn't tested by sites, is how the PCI bus performs. And in fact, the only people who really care, are people who have high end workstation and server boxes, people with nice fast SCSI cards that push the PCI bus, people pushing tons of realtime audio or video around their PCI bus, etc. Little did you know your Creamware card is asking you to create a high end workstation box.
More interesting info on PCI bus, servers, and <a href=http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showd ... =1570>dual processors here</a>.
Finally, Intel came out with a nice hub architecture with their chipsets, and then later VIA followed, and introduced V-Link. Intel's implementation is still much better, you can see that from the fact you can still get over twice the amount of PCI traffic without problems on an i815, i845, or i850 chipset compared with even the new "hot" KT266A chipset.
Competition is good though, so don't yell about VIA being bad too loudly, someone has to buy that stuff to help keep Intel prices down, eh?
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: subhuman on 2001-12-20 09:17 ]</font>
Already tested it with Creamware, usual scary bad PCI performance typical from VIA. Don't just look at benchmarks, especially just for quake (agp) and cpu speed. As for your reason, this comes down to the actual supporting architecture of the chipset. If you look at any VIA chipset before KT266 and compare it with an Intel diagram, the difference becomes very clear.
Now, they have the same theoretical PCI bus throughput, the main difference is that Intel designs and makes CPUs, Chipsets, and motherboards based on these items. They can test their CPU, with their chipsets, and then make a stable, reliable motherboard that they can then give to their suppliers to help them also make stable reliable motherboards. Contrast that with AMD, who makes excellent CPUs (and, when forced, pretty nice chipsets), but doesn't make motherboards, and VIA who makes chipsets for AMD and Intel, but doesn't make motherboards (<a href=http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardware ... 849/1/>but looks like they might have to start</a>), so what you end up with, when you get a VIA motherboard, is a chipset by one company who doesn't even make their own reference platform for a CPU they didn't make, and it ends up being a compatibility fiasco from the start.
The main difference that keeps VIA behind here for our purposes seems to be the poorly chosen PCI Arbitration scheme, PCI Latency Timer, and perhaps even a North Bridge that can't deal with, or isn't optimized, for heavy PCI traffic. (hey, the majority of internet 'benchmark' sites tests almost exclusively game performance and a few office benchmarks, so optimizing for AGP/CPU makes it look better!)
What generally isn't tested by sites, is how the PCI bus performs. And in fact, the only people who really care, are people who have high end workstation and server boxes, people with nice fast SCSI cards that push the PCI bus, people pushing tons of realtime audio or video around their PCI bus, etc. Little did you know your Creamware card is asking you to create a high end workstation box.
More interesting info on PCI bus, servers, and <a href=http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showd ... =1570>dual processors here</a>.
Finally, Intel came out with a nice hub architecture with their chipsets, and then later VIA followed, and introduced V-Link. Intel's implementation is still much better, you can see that from the fact you can still get over twice the amount of PCI traffic without problems on an i815, i845, or i850 chipset compared with even the new "hot" KT266A chipset.
Competition is good though, so don't yell about VIA being bad too loudly, someone has to buy that stuff to help keep Intel prices down, eh?
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: subhuman on 2001-12-20 09:17 ]</font>
