chipset horror storys

[Prophet]

ok just a place to hear rants about chipset issues

i hate via's pci set latancy issues and there lack of a hardware fix for them

i also hate nvidia's l2 cache issues with some boards (yes its the chipset)

have seen soooo menny systems amd and intel come to me becouse they where buggy mainly due to VIA ktXXX chipsets

on the other hand i have had almost no trobble with the alternitive chipsets such as ALI's magic and sis7XX and even amd's sets have given me few issues to fix(other then the AMD irongate agp thing)

tell me what you have seen and deal with that is//could be chipset related

 

[mat]

Okay...
my old K6-2/400 had a Via based board (no idea what Chipset it aktually was). it had 3 PCI & 3 ISA i think, but only 2 PCIs worked fine. the other one wasnt bus master capable or something like this. so no card worked there.
switched to a Celeron 433 with a BX Board and all Probles were gone...

later i decidd i need a better System and since the P3s where old and P4s just to expensive & slow (Willamete and Rambus) i bought an Athlon 1200 and a KT133A Board.
And the joy started
My SB Live 5.1 didnt work for 6 Months in this Board (had to use onboard Sound) because my PC crashed every 5-50 mins no matter what i did.
not to mention the famous 686B Bug in the Southbridge...

well i still have this Board here... somehow it works now. but some games have some short fps issues until i start them right after rebooting the system.
Its diffikult to explain, but the games run fine for ~10s and then suddenly the framerate drops and the sound has some problems to if the PC was on for some time before starting the game.

 

[Tahir2]

Intel make the best chipsets bar none. After that maybe it is AMD. The NVIDIA chipsets seem fairly stable, as does the SiS even though their SB implementation is blamed time to time.

One important factor missed is the mainboard manufacturers. The worst of which is PC Chips IMHO.

But everything has a market and you pay for quality.

My order of most stable chipsets goes like this:

1) Intel
2) AMD
3) NVIDIA
4) SiS
5) ALI
6) VIA (they had tons of problems initially

However this list will need to be revised as NVIDIA have problems with the NForce3 and VIA are apparently the best solution for A64.

Intel is not exempt. They have problems with Prescott compatibility and who can forget the problems of the i810/i820 chipset.

The best chipset IMHO was the i845 and the BX chipset.

The worst was probably the KT266 and to a lesser extent the KT266A, the KT400 and also the KT133.

 

[keegdsb]

I would tell you some stories about VIA, but I seem to have repressed all of those memories.

Older SiS chipsets have had some issues, but newer ones (735+, speaking from an AMD point of view here too) have all the kinks worked out. They're usually the prime choice for AMD video editors due to their great PCI implementation.

Nvidia, well I don't know personally, but I've heard of some bad PCI/IDE problems.

Tahir: The worst was most definitely KT133/KT133A followed by MVP3.

 

[Prophet]

dont agree with the ordering of chipsets there think its more like
1: intel/amd/sis
2: ali (not the best support but rock stable)
3: nvidia(ide and cache issues)
4: via(worst)

1:all of these chipsets are rock stable when your speeking of currnet producets older sis had issues sis is all i use for amd systems anymore and if i know somebody thats going intel i tell them to go sis since i have yet to see a chipset issue with them
amd had some issues with the irongate(orignal athlon chipset) but they where not with stab they where with primarly agp whitch was easly fixed with a reg patch
intel has put out stable chipsets for a long time even if some of these chipsets have issues that make them slow and quierky


nvidia nforce1/2 boards are decent if its a good brand and there stable if u dont get one thats got issues with the l2 cache of some prosessors i have seen 6 of these boards branding from gigabyte asus and msi that have had cache issues :/

via they have buggs like none other they from what i hear have finly fixed the pci but or at least included a patchover in the current defult bios

if you havent tryed an sis based board give an ECS: l7s7a2 a shot they are so easy to use and the onboard sound acctuly is decent nothing glamours but it sounds good and works quite well once you download the drivers from the c-media site
and with the bios i downloaded off the www.amdmb.com forums i have a 1700+@2600+ would be higher but my ram dosnt like anything over 166/333 buss

 

[jvd]

See i've never had any problems with via . GO figure .

 

[RussSchultz]

I had a via for my celeron 533 (running at 850). It wouldn't boot half the time. Just wouldn't turn on. Of course, I was overclocking...but the bus should have been fine.

Then, I had an SiS k7s5a, and that bleeping thing kept not booting up. (I think the harddrive was too slow or something) and kept loosing its time.

The k7s5a-2 I have is better, but its started doing the same thing.

I'm to the point, almost, of simply buying a Dell.

 

[3dilettante]

Back when the Via Kx133 chipset came out, I had the fun experience of finding out that windows 95 would corrupt the bios chip.

Had to send for a new chip, and upgrade windows. It was nice to get reasonably up to date software, but it added one heck of surprise addition to the cost of the system.

After that, there was the entire problem with sblive!, which meant that for 6 months programs with sound were crashing left and right.

Here's to the early adopter, the unsung hero and often all-enduring whipping boy of progress.

 

[horvendile]

Interesting thing is, I have a KT133A board with an SBLive, and there are no problems! Granted, I don't have many other cards in there and I don't deny that the problem exists for others. Just wanted to point out that the Live problem isn't compulsory...

 

[RussSchultz]

I think my via board (with the celeron 533) had horrible 'clicking' when playing DiabloII. I don't remember if that ever got resolved.

Ah well, this morning I was blessed with a computer that just simply refuses to turn on. Button press and _nothing_.

Sigh.

 

[jvd]

I had the sb live problems too. I jsut moved the card to another pci slot and guess what it worked fine. If you overclock you can not expect your system to work right. So don't give horror storys about overclocking or the effects after overclocking

 

[RussSchultz]

No overclocking now, just a dead computer.

 

[sir doris]

I had a KT113A running with a SBLive and had no compatiblity problems with it, but it was an A revision and a later version of the MoBo (Abit KT7A v1.3) which I think could take an Athlon XP. However when I upgraded to a KT400 (Gigabyte) I had all sorts of problems getting the Sound Blaster to work. Tried PCI slot 1, 2, 4, 5 & 6, Georges PCI patch thing, different drivers, installing the card after I had built the OS (Win2K). In the end I just replaced the SB with an Acoustic Edge After I changed it someone said I should have used PCI slot 3 but by then I had the AE and couldn't be bothered to try it.

But I can safely say Intel builds the best(most stable) chipsets, it's just unfortunate they don't make them for AMD processors as Pentiums are quite expensive.

 

[AAlcHemY]

nvidia nforce1/2 boards are decent if its a good brand and there stable if u dont get one thats got issues with the l2 cache of some prosessors i have seen 6 of these boards branding from gigabyte asus and msi that have had cache issues :/

Dont forget the Bios corruption, stabilty issues due the southbridge that gets to hot .. But whats that with the l2 cache ?

 

[Prophet]

ok the k7s5a is fine if u dont use pc133 ram sdram sux in it unless u have a really good psu
i have made about 8 systems with that board all are working fine

overclocking with older chipsets was a pain unless it was from 100-133 or 66-100 becouse of the pci issues

some nvidia based boards will error with certen axp chips the only way to stop the problems is to dissable l2 cache i have seen 6+ nvidia systems like that with eather gigabyte or asus boards oh and an fic to make things sucky

sis makes a really nice chipset the l7s7a2 never gives me trobble and im overclocking a axp 1700+ up to 2600+ (166(333)x12.5) with zero errors corse this board has sepret pci and cpu clocks so no worries about overclocking the agp/pci

i have seen menny issues with intel not menny that cause crashes or even program errors but slowdowns that are just anoing as hell

 

[Sxotty]

The IDE issue is really a non-issue, it is more of an annoyance as in the product does not do all that it was advertised too, and instead only runs the same as other offerings not better.

VIA also had that chipset that had no USB, which one was that? They released it and told everyone it had usb and MB companies put the USB ports in even though they did not work b/c VIA said they would fix it but they never did...

 

[mustrum]

I love my nforc2 (asus a7n8x deluxe 2.0).
It has yet to crash on me and it runs my barton 2500+ as 3200+ FSB 200 with a nice silentcooler.

Most stable chipset i've used and i had a P4 I845 before. (had many problems)

 

[Snyder]

You want chipset stories?
Here we go...

I was quite content with my A7N-266C (nForce1), at least up until several weeks ago. But then the dreaded sound problems kicked in - sound skips and distortions in many games I used. I've tried different drivers and newer BIOSes - to no avail. AAAARGH!
I would have changed my board already, but I need that 5.1 encoding - is the nForce2 better in that respect, or do I have to expect the same problems?