Are the VIA chipsets still a poor choise?

janila · Post by **janila** » Mon Apr 23, 2001 1:09 pm

Has anyone got a working setup with Thunderbird on a VIA KT133A chipset? I'm planning on buying a more powerful PC and Intel prices are terrible. For the price of 1 GHz P3 I can get a 1.3 GHz TB and one AMD hertz is more than one from Intel. Do the problems concern stability or PCI performance or both? What kind of problems have you had with VIA chipset systems?

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Mon Apr 23, 2001 2:42 pm

Megahertz aren't everything. PCI throughput has been an even more important thing to consider, as you're often shoving 32 voices of STS sampler, a reverb using host memory, and 30+ audio channels through the PCI bus. This is all handled by the Creamware DSPs, so the only limitation is how much stuff you can shove through the PCI bus.

If PCI throughput weren't a consideration, AMD would rule. However, VIA chipsets are still WAY behind Intel chipsets for PCI bandwidth.

I have heard promising things about the AMD761 chipset. A good gamble would be the Asus A7M266 board based on this chipset, if any AMD761 board is going to work, it'll be the ASUS board. After building a few based on this A7M266 board and testing the PCI performance, it is very close to an 815, roughly 80-90%.

ASUS CUSL2 is still the PCI throughput king, even more than a AMD761. You have to make trade offs in your system: PCI throughput, or CPU? You've already chosen Creamware, so CPU is less important...

Then there is the question "how much PCI throughput do I actually need?" And some people are saying the AMD761 gives them enough...

[edit: more experience with the A7M266 board]

[ This Message was edited by: subhuman on 2001-06-27 08:58 ]

Mo · Post by Mo » Tue Apr 24, 2001 12:53 am

also SIS have brought out a new chipset, which is, after years of making lowcost/lowperformance - chipsets, actually as performant as intel or new via chipsets.
has also support for sdr/ddr-ram, tualatin-p3 and agp4x, a similar chipset for athlon will follow. it also comes with a new architecture, but it´s more integrated as the ones from intel and via - there is no southbridge anymore...
...still have not heard anything about nvidia´s crush-chipset, anyone?

bosone · Post by **bosone** » Tue Apr 24, 2001 1:51 am

xcuseme...
can u tell me the exat name and model for the best MOBO tu use with pulsar?

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Tue Apr 24, 2001 8:02 am

ASUS CUSL2 or ASUS CUSL2C. If not tweaking or overclocking, the king for stability and lots of DSP cards seems to be the Intel-brand i815 board. Of course, you trade frills and tweakability for pure stability and non-overclockability (hey, that's not a word)

freddan · Post by **freddan** » Tue May 01, 2001 2:02 am

So I guess the thing you can do if you're running for example a KT7a-raid is to just try to patch as much as you can to latest BIOSs and so on...

/freddan

MeloManiac · Post by **MeloManiac** » Tue May 01, 2001 4:30 am

What do you mean non-overclockability. Although not as many options as VIA chipsets, the i815 is excellent for overclocking. I am running my P3 500 at 667 mhz (133 FSB) which results in the right AGP and PCI speeds.

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Tue May 01, 2001 8:19 am

I was talking about the *Intel 815* board. Intel doesn't give voltage on it's motherboards, since it doesn't condone overclocking. But, it is the ultimate in DSP card stability, even more so than the ASUS, but you can't tweak it much.

The ASUS board with the intel 815 chipset, however, is (almost) infinitely overclockable, of course. (And thats why I run the ASUS myself)

[ This Message was edited by: subhuman on 2001-05-01 09:20 ]

Jerry · Post by **Jerry** » Wed May 02, 2001 6:19 pm

This is my mail to CW tech support:

Hello:

I'm a Pusar I plus user,why everytime I worked iwth Logic audio windows
4.6.1 even 4.7,I always got " ASIO over load" message when I do audio
recording or audio instrument.....how I setting my LAW 4.7 to work with
Pulsa???my Pulsar is 2.04a..

And by the way...how long time I have to wait for "XTC" come out?

Jerry
TAIWAN

And the reply is :

Hello,

I am wondering, are you using a motherboard that has a VIA chipset? Our
boards don't work with this chipset, and the type of errors that occur are
simular to that. And too, Pulsar XTC is being delayed, expect it out at the
end of the month.

Salute,

Rob Tompe
Technical Support
CreamWare Audio Solutions,Inc.
Email: support@creamware.com
Web: http://www.creamware.com
Support Line: 604-435-5158

Mo · Post by Mo » Thu May 03, 2001 3:45 am

well, at creamware (germany) they will be quite surprised to hear that "their boards don´t work with via chipsets".
sure there are some issues always occuring with via chips but that doesn´t mean that the boards don´t work on 'em... they just don´t work as good as on intel chipsets... you can´t go on full sample- and verb-load, because pci-performance is worse than on intel or amd chipsets - but indeed your asio problems may be related to that...

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Thu May 03, 2001 10:24 am

I've seen PCI throughput issues, on an untweaked VIA-based motherboard (P3V4X) where it would give a PCI Overflow with ONLY the BigMixer and the full ASIO channels in the project. Talk about a performance hit... You can squeeze a tiny bit more by adjusting the PCI Latency Timer in the BIOS as high as it can go. If your motherboard doesn't have "PCI Latency Timer" in the BIOS, then you should have bought the ASUS

But since you didn't, try hunting down a program called TweakBIOS and you may be able to adjust the PCI Latency Timer in software using that program. Careful with such a lowlevel program though, use it at your own risk...

[ This Message was edited by: subhuman on 2001-06-27 08:59 ]

janila · Post by **janila** » Sun May 06, 2001 10:56 am

Has anyone tested Creamware DSP-cards on a P4? Is there any theoretical problems or should the cards work with ease?

Mo · Post by Mo » Mon May 07, 2001 5:28 am

i´ve read there are some pci issues with the i850, but i think these are only relevant for not-busmastering cards...

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Mon May 07, 2001 11:08 am

Interestingly, Eric Dahlberg
from PulsarScope bought a P4 just to test out it's performance with the cards. It seems the i850 chipset is pretty close to the i815E chipset results, only a little less PCI (4 reverbs on i850 instead of 6 on the CUSL2/i815E).

<a href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pulsar-sc ... 21360>Read the P4 Test Here</a>.

Mo · Post by Mo » Tue May 08, 2001 1:14 am

that´s quite funny, isn´t it?

i mean, the 815 uses standard sdram, one channel, and the i850 uses two rambus channels. so (imho) it can´t be the memory transfer which is important to that issue, it´s really the bandwidth of interconnects... and nothing but bandwidth.... (looking very forward for nvidia´s crush-chipset)

janila · Post by **janila** » Fri May 11, 2001 2:03 am

I just wish some DDR P4 motherboards would be released. Rambus doesn't seem to be as fast as it should for the price.

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Fri May 11, 2001 2:32 am

Well...nothing much to say here except that Via is also known as Cyrix... to change the name doesn´t mean to change the technology ;-p ...

Mo · Post by Mo » Fri May 11, 2001 3:49 am

via bought cyrix.

apart from that, via´s new kt266 (ddr-chipset for athlon) has the potential to be best choice for pulsar on athlons, as board manufacturers get in tune with it... the new msi flagship mobo beats the 760-board a7m266 in nearly all skills (esp. memory transfer).

@janila: just wait for brookdale. i can´t imagine that intel waits very long to spend ddr-support to it, as long as the sdram-interface is a needle´s ear for the p4, and ddr-ram costs less every day...

but still i´d like to have more information about the first crush12-boards, coming this summer... anyone?
well, maybe they come along with pulsar 3.0...

[ This Message was edited by: Mo on 2001-05-11 04:53 ]

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Fri May 11, 2001 7:36 am

well I just read in some of the hardwaresites that the most stable chipset you can use with Windows is still the BX. So I stay with my old board and wait for the next generation...

Mo · Post by Mo » Fri May 11, 2001 5:06 pm

well, so do i (my p2b and p3b grow old...

) ...but what will that be? 64bit-hammer from amd? or >2ghz-p4?

if pc stuff that thing for what for others the cars and women... (

) ...it´s quite exciting watching the execution of moore´s law...

it was very temptating, during the last time, watching the incredible cheap and fast durons run through several benchmarks, itching even p3 out sometimes. but unfortunately all the boards are not as suited for pulsar (and that counts for me) as good ol´ BX... perhaps the nvidia-chipset could change this...

and that would be the point when i buy a new mobo...

[ This Message was edited by: Mo on 2001-05-11 18:08 ]