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AMD Hardware

VIA K8T900 Chipset Launched For AMD Platform 120

Posted by Zonk from the shinnnnny dept.
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."
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VIA K8T900 Chipset Launched For AMD Platform More

VIA K8T900 Chipset Launched For AMD Platform

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  • in related news... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @04:11PM (#14094690) Journal
    Only 39 days left for the AMD vs. Intel dual core duel. Help them and sign the petition. [amd.com]

    AMD has also published why they think that Intel will not [amd.com] participate...

    • Intel won't show up because they would get pwned. Not a good idea to show up knowing that you're going to lose. Intel is just having a hard time adjusting to AMDs rise in the cpu market. AMD has quietly been focused on quality and innovation as opposed to gimmicky commercials and stiff arming tactics like Intel.

      gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

    • Re:in related news... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      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?

      • Re:in related news... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Epi-man ( 59145 )
        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....

      • Re:in related news... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by InvalidError ( 771317 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @06:07PM (#14095939)
        You're right for the power and performance... but price-wise, Athlon FX and X2 are not particularly cheaper than their closest Pentium equivalents - for example, the cheapest X2 costs nearly $100 more than the cheapest Pentium-D and both companies' top chips bear the same $1000-ish price tag. Below the upper-mid-range, things do become very much one-sided in AMD's favour though.

        As for why they need marketing, that is a matter of mindshare. It does not matter how good your platform is if you are unable to get big buyers to place orders because they do not know about your products or are not aware of them being potentially superior to the stuff they usually order. We know some CEOs&others from large companies have become aware of the performance, scalability and power advantages of AMD64 chips by the fact that Dell has started making calls to notify its suppliers that it may start building Opteron boxes. A little more marketing could go a long way towards cracking tough nuts like Dell.
        • The Dell thing is just a rumour, and it is true that people asociate computers with Pentiums. Intel has massively more marketing out there.

          Yes AMD has started to let their increadible price/performance slip but they are at a cusp of getting Dell onboard and getting fab 36 up and running by 2007 we'll know if they are evil.

          As far as this Duel goes it is interesting they challenged Intel, but it shows what a small peice of the pie they are fighting over.

          By all accounts enterprise doesn't nescessarily ne
          • AMD cannot outsell Intel because it lacks the mindshare and fab capacity... but this is changing: AMD is up to nearly 30% market share (desktop+server) while Intel is down to about 70%, this is +10% for AMD, -10% for Intel and -20% for the gap between the two compared to last year. If AMD cracks Dell, things could even out fairly fast. AMD's upcoming glueless (non-Horus&all) 16-ways and 32-ways (as in sockets) chips will put immense pressure on Dell's server business... and any other vendor who currentl
        • The X2 last time I checked out performed the Pentium-D by a good margin. The FXs like the EEs are just nuts. They are for hard core gamers.
          • I did state that AMD had the performance and power advantages in my first paragraph, bringing that point back is redundant.

            If Joe Sixpack wants a dual-core chip and he does not mind the heat and does not care too much about absolute performance, the $100 difference between the two sides' entry-level dual-core offering will settle it.

            In my case, I do not care for performance much as long as the the system does not crumble under my moderate-to-heavy multitasking habbits... and here, my 3GHz P4-NW/HT performs
            • I have a much different experience. My Athlon 64 runs circles around my P4. I do tend to do a lot of compiling and running CAD so that my be the difference. I think mulit core has real promise but a lot of benefits from HT really seem to be in peoples head. Once you get to a heavy load HT will actually cause a performance hit since it is not really two cores. The same thing will happen with the D but in that case it will be caused by being starved for memory. You like your P4 and it may be the best fit for
              • As I said, I do not care for absolute performance, what I need is a system that can survive cruel and unusual workloads yet remain responsive. Try debugging a multi-threaded program with VisualStudio on non-MC/MT CPUs, if you are lucky enough to break inside a touchy "unbreakable" loop, the system locks up for several minutes before recovering.

                Since I need MP/MT for my computers to survive a "normal" workload but am not generally otherwise performance-bound, the cheapest thing that gives me real concurrent
      • This reminds me of the AMD DX4 vs Pentium ads in the mid 90's. AMD ran an ad in PC MAG listing 100 reasons the DX4 was better than the pentium, most of them revolved around the fact that the pentium couldn't divide properly.
      • If you're referring to AMD's top ten reasons Intel won't participate in the dual-core duel... it's not snotty marketing, it's a joke in the style of David Letterman and the like. It shows that AMD allows their people to have (and express) a sense of humor -- this is healthy.
        • At least you said "a sense of humor" and didn't assume that they had "a good sense of humor".

          You can watch David Letterman's show for the first five minutes and get the entire show. The rest of the show is just endlessly repeating some phrase that the audience laughed at once in that first five minutes.

    • why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @04:35PM (#14094994)
      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?

  • SLI works (Score:5, Informative)

    by click2005 ( 921437 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @04:14PM (#14094726)
    The Tech Report got SLI working with this chipset. http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/via-k8t900/in dex.x?pg=5 [techreport.com]

    "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."

    • ...but VIA doesn't. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "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!
      • Mods please mod parent down. I have a via system at work and it's been running for months without issue, however my nforce3 based box here at home routinely has issues.
    • What is this about? Anything that involves "lockout" or "proprietary" sends me away.

  • Not a chance (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bullfish ( 858648 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @04:19PM (#14094787)
    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.
    • ditto!

      the last mobo i owned had a VIA chipset, and it was nothing but trouble, i have since bought a new board with Nvidia for my AMD
    • I'm totally with you on this one. I had more than my fair share of major issues with VIA's hardware on a few different platforms. I avoid their products whenever possible.

    • Re:Not a chance (Score:2, Informative)

      by gid ( 5195 )
      I've had some pretty iffy via boards as well, but their newer stuff in my experience has been quite pleasant. My K8T800 board (Asus K8V SE Deluxe) has been rock solid.
      • Their new stuff might be good, but they lost me as a customer years ago, due to some less than stellar K7 stuff. Unless their competition in the AMD chipset arena (read: NVIDIA) really makes a hash of it with future products, I won't be going back to VIA. Goes to show, customers have long memories for vendor reliability!

    • Re:Not a chance (Score:2, Insightful)

      by daoine_sidhe ( 619572 )
      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.
      • Now that is strange. I've tried three Via solutions since I started building my own or having it done for me back in 01. Not a single one ever managed to be stable. I've had very good luck with Nvidia and SIS. My 1.4 on an Asus A7S333 is still running strong and my XP1800+ using an A7N266 is still a happy camper. My new machine is Nforce 4 and can usually stay up for about 2 weeks before needing a reboot, I think that is just XP.

      • Re:Not a chance (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gabebear ( 251933 )
        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.

      • Its altitude y'all (Score:2, Insightful)

        by pcnetworx1 ( 873075 )
        I swear, with how often people say "Nvidia is better than VIA" or "Intel is better than Nvidia" etc, etc. I think the chipsets perform differently based on altitude!

        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

        • Funny you should mention that...I think it's aura, not even altitude. Bear with me here: Sitting beside me is my precious fileserver. I call him Ironman. Ironman has a current uptime of about 270 days (had to bring him down when I moved). It is a dual PII-400MHz based on a Tekram P6B40D-A5 motherboard (440BX Chipset) that used to belong to my old roommate. He replaced it because it was flaky. I tried for months to get it stable for him, and I couldn't. I watched it crash. It wasn't user error, it w
          • I've observed "phenomena" like you've described as well. I'm in my current line of work because apparently, I can drive out the demons that cause system crashes :)

            I decided to start earning some money every time someone says: "Thats funny. It's not doing it now." And once I've touched it, it rarely goes back...
        • ahh yes. that is when you tell little sister to run some anti-spyware and update her virus software

    • Re:Not a chance (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Homology ( 639438 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @04:44PM (#14095100)
      VIA releases docs to their chipsets, which nVidia does not (even for their network components, go figure), so VIA has better open source support. It's better to write drivers from specs than to write drivers with extensive reverse engineering. And I'd rather avoid the binary only-drivers that is so popular on Linux (but not available on *BSD that I use), and I'm sure I'm not the only one to install en extra NIC because the one on the motherboard is unsupported.

      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?

      • Perhaps this is the reason that VIA chipsets seem more stable under linux.. The grandparent posted commented about how poor the drivers were, i assume this is the windows drivers that via themselves write.. the linux drivers for via chipsets seem to work perfectly.. I have several machines (Athlon, Athlon64 etc) running via chipsets and linux which are rock solid.
    • Never had an issue with VIA chipsets. Nvidia chipsets blow for use on a non-Windows platform. They work, but barely and who knows when they change something to break support. Also, why do they put a firewall on the BIOS lvl? Nvidia chipsets scare me with all the "extras" they put on there.
    • Agreed. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go reformat for the third time because of my (*^&$!@#*&^$! K8T800 mobo.
    • SiS from the days of 735 had been extremelly good, the least troublesome on AMD platform, and on par with Intel in stability, etc. And it is the only one with solid PCI bandwith/implementation on that platform...
      • I agree. I have an ECS with the SIS735 and have never had issues. (knock on wood)
        • I will have to disagree. Out of two Sis 735 based boards, I've worked with to much of a degree, one is 'flaky' as best I can describe it (under all of Mandrake ~8.1(might have been something other), RH 8/9, win2k pro/server, Gentoo), the other's on-board networking doesn't work in Windows 2000. (Does work, but very poorly in Linux/Gentoo) (I think it was ECS, I can't check remotely)

          Admittedly, the flaky one is in a room, which seems to be the opposite extreme from the outside, and hard on computers (Somet

          • Your last paragraph - exactly.
            And it was probably ECS...so buy better vendors next time. Out of their 735 was one good model/revision (ironically, the first one, barebones, with just the chipset), later models were flaky.
            However chipset is also important, there are things which even Asus, etc. won't ever do with a Via chipset...
    • That's really strange. As far as reliability goes, I'm much more leery of nVidia. I got burned several times with various vendors nForce2 implementations. My old KT266a and my current KT880 were / are rock-solid and quite fast. I have also had issues with several nForce3 boards. nForce4 has been stable so far.

      In some cases, it might not even have anything to do with the chipset: some brands are just more reliable than others.
    • 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

  • Dual GPU's (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @04:22PM (#14094826)
    This is what Sony and Microsoft should have done with their consoles instead of focusing on special chips.

    • Re:Dual GPU's (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 )
      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.
      • Actually, the R520 only has 16... R580 might upgrade that to 24.

        Having multiple GPUs works well (at least in theory) because graphics rendering is implicitly massively parallel. But GPUs usually choke on RAM bandwidth so going multi-core is pointless unless RAM bandwidth can keep up... and if able to feed twice as much bandwidth to a chip, it would probably be simpler and more efficient to simply double the number of pipelines - we're back on choking upon RAM bandwidth. There is no point in scaling the numb
      • ATi's X1800 XT (r520) actually has only 16 pixel pipelines, and is clocked at a very-high (for a graphics card) 625 MHz. nVidia's GeForce 7800 GTX has 24 pixel pipelines.
      • Indeed, high end graphics systems from SGI have just been massively parallel for years... I have an old onyx where the video hardware consists of several boards containing dedicated graphics processors, about 30 in total.. all running in parallel.

  • They make solid equipment. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @04:32PM (#14094957) Homepage Journal
    The last three systems I've owned has used them for memory interface, and never gave me a problem -- their embedded devices (audio, USB, etc.) have all performed well and saved me from the cost of additional peripherals... unlike other embeds I've used in the past.

    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.

    • Re:They make solid equipment. (Score:4, Informative)

      by merreborn ( 853723 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @05:11PM (#14095406) Journal
      The average computer uses as much as the Mayflower worth of coal to run on any given day

      I don't know how much a "Mayflower" of coal is, but unless it's on the order of 10 pounds, you're way off, buddy.

      We've been through this before [slashdot.org].
    • I can't do without optical mice! I just smashed the mechanical one because it refused to move.

    • Re:They make solid equipment. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @05:18PM (#14095468) Homepage
      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.

      Define wasteful. People like their computers with fast 3D cards and optical mice. In many ways you can say most of human activity is "wasteful", in that it makes no sense and consumes lots of resources. For example, a weekend before christmas I'm flying to another city to visit some friends and have a few beers. If you want to get all objective about it, I could buy some beers at the local store and drink them here, alone. Much less wasteful, eh?

      As far as the "vast" consumption of energy a computer has, I doubt it makes a dent in most people's budget. What else would I be doing? Watching TV, oh another screen. Reading a book? Yeah, in a good reading light that is quite bright really. Driving somewhere to meet someone, club, pub wheteever? On the whole, I don't think my evenings in front of my computer are the most expensive ones, if you don't consider the sunk cost of purchasing it.

      Quantum and reversible computing are way off. Even if they do were to come through (this is like talking about cold fusion...) there's no reason to believe they'll function as general-purpose CPUs. The rules that define what operations are reversible are odd at best. And the essence is to control a piece of energy so well we do not incur entropy, which seems to be cutting it awfully close to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It's an interesting line of pursuit but I'd be more surprised if it succeeded than if it didn't.

      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.

      Best point of the whole post. If you look at the total life-cycle, the short time it's burning electricity in your house is nothing. Imagine all the consumption that goes into the manufacture and shipping of each chip, including the machines to produce them as well as dispose of them. Environmentally, I think you're better off making your gear last longer than looking at how much energy it consumes right now. An environmental box is one not located at a landfill.
    • The average computer uses as much as the Mayflower worth of coal to run on any given day.

      I'm sorry - I don't understand metric; how many libaries of congress per furlong is that?

    • Grammar tip: You don't have to say that a thing is used as what it is. Effect is a noun. Affect is a transitive verb.

    • "Much of this is spent on wasteful peripherals we could do without, such as fancy 3D graphics cards or optical mice..." Optical mice? What are you smoking? I doubt that my mouse uses 50-100W of power. That would be a "laser" mouse.
  • 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.

    • Re:I don't trust via (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dave_f1m ( 602921 )
      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 driver
      • It was not the drivers fault, it really was a VIA fuckup. Same problem occured under other OS's as well and there was no (working) patch as I recall.

        There were some very specific combinations of master/slave and where to put your cdro; drives that made the problem go away. Not their best chipset.
        • It was the drivers fault. Creative wouldn't release the PCI bus in a reasonable amount of time because they thought they could squeeze out a little extra performance by hogging the bus. That is why their card fucked up on my 440bx chipset as well.

  • T900? (Score:1, Troll)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 )
    VIA trying to say "I'll be backhhh!"?

    yeah it was weak

  • Why all the Via Hate? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dgkulzer ( 909004 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @05:54PM (#14095825)
    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.
  • 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 [rme-audio.com]. 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, becaus
    • My last VIA motherboard, which housed a Athlon XP 2800+ ran fantasticly and without a hitch.. If you want to stay away from both companies, you have a third option as well, a SiS chipset which my current motherboard runs with, and I have been having no problems with it either.
  • 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
    • I forgot to say that Anandtech has a good review on the reference board and the asrock board with that chipset. Here's the url: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524&p= 8 [anandtech.com] . The performance seems very good and if stability is the same of the old ali drivers then probably your lcds blue pixels will be safe since you will probably never see a BSOD. I can't wait to put my hands on one of the non-asrocks (I hate asrock bioses) mbs that will come out with that chipset! Oh my i'm so excited! (eeek!)
    • I am the owner of AsRock 939Dual-Sata2 and all that I can say is AVOID THIS CRAP!!! It hangs. I swapped between AGP and PCI (not PCIe) cards, sound cards (the onboard sound is terrible), NICs, SATA and PATA disks; removed as many components as i could but it still hangs sometimes. And sometimes it cannot boot. I don't understand the anthem from the reviews. Unfortunatelly I don't believe that normal mobomakers (Abit,Asus,Epox,Gigabyte) will make products based on ULi 1695 chipset.
      • are you sure it's not broken? I read about people using that mb on an italian hardware website (www.hwupgrade.it) and they didn't seem to have problems. About the boot problem I think that it has been fixed in a new bios version.
      • I'm running this board with an Opteron 165, integrated audio/ethernet, Radeon 9700Pro (AGP), and PVR-150 tuner card. I haven't had any of the problems you're talking about. Check your hardware or your drivers, and make sure you're running the latest BIOS (although 1.20 and 1.40 worked fine for me). I've read about cold boot issues for some, but a BIOS upgrade may help that.

  • I love me my K8T890 boxes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @09:02PM (#14097221)
    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.

    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 bu
  • 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

  • price (Score:2, Interesting)

    by stonefoz ( 901011 )
    does this mean there will finaly be some mobo come out for 64 that don't cost an arm and a leg?
  • Does it run OS X? ;-)

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