I also have experienced serious problems with a VIA motherboard. I have documented the problems on this board before, but after reading this thread, I think I should describe the situation once again. I'd like to be brief, but that may not be possible! <GRIN>
First off ... believe me, I am not a VIA-hater, anti-AMD, or some kind of Intel-shill. I'm not political in nature, and don't really care what company puts out which processor or motherboard. The only thing I have ever been after is a stable, fast system at a decent price. I'm glad that there is competition, because price wars are good for us, the consumers ... but beyond that, I have no real interest in the situation.
I bought my computer from Alienware in South Miami last August. Component list:
MSI K7T Pro mainboard
KT133 chipset
nVidia GeForce2 GTS 64DDR
256MB Virtual Channel PC133
Adaptec 29160N SCSI controller
IBM 18.3GB SCSI drive
Plexwriter CD-RW - SCSI
Pioneer DVD - IDE
300-Watt Antec power supply
Win98 SE
That's all the components that really matter for the discussion in this post.
Initially, I had no problems with the system. Except for locating decent video card drivers that were compatible with the VIA chipset (which was a tough thing to do in August of last year, because nVidia was only releasing Intel compatible drivers at the time.)
For several months, the system ran just fine. I was pleased with the purchase. I recall recommending similar systems to friends and family, both for the price, and the performance.
Then around January, I was running a game, and the system locked up. I got a blank screen, and the system wouldn't boot up for a couple of hours. It wouldn't enter the POST routine, and although there were no beep codes, the fact that the video card would not initialize led me to believe that I was either dealing with a failing video card, a failing power supply, and/or a problem with the power supply feeding clean current to the AGP bus.
As it turned out, I was right on all counts. And the problem was the VIA mainboard.
It took quite a while to isolate the source of the problem. I posted here, and in other forums, looking for any information that could help me fix the machine. As it turned out, I also received a ton of abuse in the process, primarily from members of this board, most of whom seemed to have either a love affair with their VIA boards, or an extensive hatred of anything Intel. Take your pick. I suspect that the majority of people who decided to be anything but helpful, or forthcoming, came from people who have never really pushed their systems ... especially using benchmarking programs, or intensive 3D games. And if you guys know anything about Alienware ... this is a company that specializes in building gaming computers. This is one the reasons I had them build the system in the first place. (The other was the wholesale prices I couldn't get anywhere else at the time.) So I was more than a little disappointed when these problems started cropping up.
Within a week or so, the video card failed, and in the process, caused damage to the other components in the system. Some of it was obvious at first, such as one of the memory modules failing. Other parts took longer to die.
I ended up buying two more power supplies before I found one that could run the system, replacing the memory, and buying a new video card. It would have been nice to have been able to have this done under warranty, but Alienware was adamant that there was nothing wrong with these VIA motherboards, and basically, refused to honor the warranty.
I'm not kidding, not in the slightest, I called these people over 40 times between Febuary and the beginning of May, attempting to get replacement parts. Three weeks ago, I really got pissed off, because the hard drive suddenly failed. I had often mentioned to the Alienware techs that the drive's burst rate had been cut in half after the video card died, and was completely ignored. I was told on a dozen different occasions that the parts were either on order, had already been shipped, or were temporarily out of stock. Once I was told that the parts had been shipped to a guard named Trotman, in a guard post, somewhere in Virginia. Obviously someone took a wrong turn. I live in North Carolina, and have never met anyone named Trotman. It was a pretty pathetic lie, in my opinion.
So what I had was an expensive, dead can.
I can't even begin to tell you how many websites I went to, or how much literature I read. Suffice it to say ... it was a long, drawn out education. I tried driver after driver, patchs, fixes ... you name it; I gave it a shot. I spent over 200 hours in just one month, looking for possible solutions. I also spent far too much time in various forums, arguing with people who insisted that VIA chipsets were the greatest thing since spun sugar. I can't agree ... not after all I've seen, and the money I've spent.
Eventually, I added another 256MB memory module and installed Win2k, hoping to add additional stability to the system. That worked for about 4 weeks ... as long as I didn't attempt to play any games. Thirty seconds of any game ... the system locked up, despite the fact that I was using a different video card, new memory, and a new power supply. And between all the problems, and my shrinking wallet ... I was willing to give the games up if it meant that the damned computer would run reliably. And it did, except for the games ... until the hard drive failed.
These are some of the primary issues I discovered during my research.
One ... in order to run a Geforce card in a VIA motherboard, and use intensive 3D apps, you need a power supply that can handle 20 amps for the 3.3v line. And this can't be the maximum drain on the power supply, because the 5v and 3.3v lines "share", so if one line is pushed to maximum, the other goes to the miniumum. A lack of power can be nearly as tough on your components as a sudden shock. So the power supply must be able to handle 20 amps for that 3.3 line, at minimum. And an Antec 300-watt cannot handle the job for more than a few months, providing only 16 amps for the 3.3v line.
Despite claims to the contrary, the Antec 400-watt is so inefficient that it is actually worse than the 300-watt. I installed one ... it died in two weeks. It was just a waste of cash.
I finally installed a dual-fan Leadman 400-watt, and found it to be a better constructed, much heavier, more powerful unit. That solved the power supply problem.
The next thing I should mention is that the power leads VIA and AMD have used on their mainboards are just puny, for lack of a better word. This is due to the patent for the technology being held by Intel, and so an alternate method of supplying current to the various components had to be used ... and it sucks.
However, you may not ever run into this issue if you use your system mostly for 2D apps, because the problems with getting clean power to the AGP bus don't surface until you start pushing the system, such as when playing heavy duty games.
There IS an end to all of this moaning and bitching. Two weeks ago, I hired a lawyer, and sent a Registered Letter to the CEO of Alienware, Alex Aguila. I received a response almost immediately, and during the conversation, Mr. Aguila and I had a long discussion about VIA mainboards.
He admits to there being an entire host of problems, especially with VIA motherboards shipped late last year. It didn't help that the company was in the process of moving to a new location, and had some changes in the upper management ... Mr Aguila is the new CEO of the company. This caused tons of problems with their shipping department ... and especially, with technical support and quality control. As if I didn't know that already.
Due to these hardware problems, Alienware has changed the brand of power supplies they use. I was also told that it is recommended, if you have an Award BIOS, to use an older version. My system shipped with version 1.6. I had upgraded the BIOS to 2.4. It was interesting to discover that version 2.2 could actually cause damage to the chip! The version currently being tested that appears to be stable is 1.5 ... but that might cause a loss of ATA-100 support, necessitating the use of a third party controller for these faster drives. That sucks, too ... but it's just yet another thing you'll have to deal with when running a VIA board.
The end result of my conversation with Mr. Aguila is that I have been sent a brand-new replacement system. It was nice of him to allow me to choose anything I wanted. And that's exactly what I did. I was very appreciative of the amazing attitude change in the technician assigned to build the machine ... I wonder where that arrogant ass went that I had spoken to so many times before? <GRIN> Nothing beats going right to the top.
I learned my lesson, and I now have an Intel machine with an Enermax 550-watt power supply, running Win2K, with a Geforce3 card, and 512MB of RDRAM. I installed every game I own on one of the drives, and set up the system with a particularly intensive demo that I ran for 3 days straight. It seems to be doing the job ... but if it doesn't, I have a new three year warranty, and the home phone number of the company CEO. If there is a bug in the 850 chipset, I'm going to find it before everything in the machine goes up in smoke. And I will never again purchase a system with a VIA chipset, regardless of how attractive the price may be. I'm not going to allow myself to go through an ordeal like that again ... no more replacing the chipset and video card drivers every month, no more lockups when trying to play a game, no more system instability, no more referring to page after page of notes to get the sequences straight when installing drivers and updates ... no more playing around with disabling ACPI, messing around with IRQ's that conflict with the video card, no more sweating over AGP aperture sizes, AGP driving values, memory latency settings, Fast-Writes, etc. Now I have a system that just runs ... correctly, and does what I ask without dying in mid-session. And that's all I wanted in the very beginning for my money ... I didn't want to devote my every spare waking moment to research; attempting to fix what should have worked in the first place.
That's my story. If your VIA mainboard is functional, more power to ya. If it has never caused you problems ... I think that is great. Consider yourself one of the lucky ones ... one of the mythical 90% I've seen mentioned. (And you got that real-world percentage from where, exactly? I'd like to see that facts behind that number, instead of just an uneducated, ignorant opinion straight out of the deep blue sky.) But if your system makes you want to pull out your credit card and start pricing large-bore weapons, I urge you to consider making a gift of your computer to a local charity, and starting over from scratch. (Or do what I did, and scream until you get to talk to someone who can remove the offending machine and replace it. Just be prepared to take legal action, if you get ignored.) It's one thing for a system to be educational ... and learning new things is cool. I'm all for people getting their heads out of the sand and stop acting like computers are only for super-geeks. I've been an IT tech long enough to wish that most people would at least give a computer a try before calling it the spawn of Satan. But there's a limit to how much time and money anyone should be willing to invest in just one can ... and I've had my fill of VIA and AMD. And it's entirely their fault.
Good luck to all ...
Toejam31
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Toejam31 on 05/10/01 08:32 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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