Rumor: No more chipsets from VIA?
- Thread starter Farid
- Start date
Another one.
Will they still make X86 CPU's ? And what about the S3 Graphics patent/technology portfolio ?
Will they still make X86 CPU's ? And what about the S3 Graphics patent/technology portfolio ?
All I can say is, YEAH, IT IS ABOUT GOD DAMN TIME THEY QUIT MAKING CHIPSETS! Good they sucked. Only thing left to hapen now is for Nvidia to buy them up.
I don't really have much love for their chipsets either, but I'd hate to see their very low power x86 options go completely away. I also wouldn't mind seeing them build another good audio solution like the Envy24 was back in the day. Creative needs some competition badly
I will miss them.
My crappy old box in the study is still chugging away nicely with it's A-bit KR7A-133 motherboard. It was supposed to be the mutts nuts back in the day.
Nvidia seems to have pee'd on their fireworks now though and ATI/AMD coming into the fray can't have helped either.
My crappy old box in the study is still chugging away nicely with it's A-bit KR7A-133 motherboard. It was supposed to be the mutts nuts back in the day.
Nvidia seems to have pee'd on their fireworks now though and ATI/AMD coming into the fray can't have helped either.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
The problem with VIA is that since their Socket A heyday, their chipset business has been eaten by Nvidia and ATI/AMD, as well as Intel. I guess they've not got a worthwhile business model being the fourth choice for chipsets in the face of these much larger companies.
Getting rid of some (but perhaps not all) of their chipset assets positions them more favorably to be acquired, because no company in their right mind would buy them otherwise given the current state of that industry, IMO.
And yes, NVIDIA has nearly enough cash right now to acquire VIA if they want to, since their market cap is about $1.3B and NVIDIA has $1.3B in cash right now too. Rather amusing coincidence. There are a few factors to consider, but basically, if NVIDIA wanted to acquire VIA in a few months, they very easily could.
The problem is I'm not sure why they'd want to. VIA represents a truckload of employees, more than half of NV's. It's nearly 40% of NV's engineers too IIRC. That's a lot of operating expenses, and also a LOT of redundancies. What in the world could they use all these employees for? And how well can they integrate them in the company?
On the other hand, if VIA restructures themselves aggressively first, then I can see NVIDIA (and others!) potentially becoming much more interested in them. This is the context in which this should probably be seen, IMO. It's not just restructuring to become profitable; it might also be to become a more attractive acquisition target.
And yes, NVIDIA has nearly enough cash right now to acquire VIA if they want to, since their market cap is about $1.3B and NVIDIA has $1.3B in cash right now too. Rather amusing coincidence. There are a few factors to consider, but basically, if NVIDIA wanted to acquire VIA in a few months, they very easily could.
The problem is I'm not sure why they'd want to. VIA represents a truckload of employees, more than half of NV's. It's nearly 40% of NV's engineers too IIRC. That's a lot of operating expenses, and also a LOT of redundancies. What in the world could they use all these employees for? And how well can they integrate them in the company?
On the other hand, if VIA restructures themselves aggressively first, then I can see NVIDIA (and others!) potentially becoming much more interested in them. This is the context in which this should probably be seen, IMO. It's not just restructuring to become profitable; it might also be to become a more attractive acquisition target.
the maddman
Regular
The best luck I've had with Athlon 64 chipsets has been Via. I'm really happy with my Abit AV8. It was simple to setup and works well.
I had 4 DOA Nvidia chipset boards, and both that I got to work had really amazingly odd power problems (One fails to power on whenever you unplug the power supply until you unplug the powersupply from the mobo internally, the other has to be jump started with a paperclip when the powersupply is first plugged in, then works fine.)
I hope AMD can get their chipsets sorted out, Intel has a big advantage there. Just so long as they don't decide to cripple them (Stupid i815/810 memory limits)
Yeah I'd have to say too that I've not had any better luck with NV's chipsets than VIA's. NV just gets a lot more leeway for some reason. NF4 had lots of problems. Even more than NF2, lol. I have a KT266A board from 6 years ago still running here at work. One of my laptops uses K8T800M and has been a solid performer for 3 years now. You have to go back to Super 7 to really see some bad VIA stuff, IMO.
I think it's rather ironic that NF4 had the same issues with Creative cards as VIA's old 686A/B southbridges.
VIA's chipset division really seemed to fall right off the map when K8 arrived. Their initial offerings were ok, but then they just started to fall behind and never came back. And around that time, NV and ATI introduced their proprietary multi-GPU solutions.
I think it's rather ironic that NF4 had the same issues with Creative cards as VIA's old 686A/B southbridges.
VIA's chipset division really seemed to fall right off the map when K8 arrived. Their initial offerings were ok, but then they just started to fall behind and never came back. And around that time, NV and ATI introduced their proprietary multi-GPU solutions.
I used the AV8 when I was reviewing here, in order to keep the platform neutral. Curious thing was that I had the opposite luck - I was on my third board in very little time. I stuck with it, though, because I did like the board.
Yeah I'd have to say too that I've not had any better luck with NV's chipsets than VIA's. NV just gets a lot more leeway for some reason. NF4 had lots of problems. Even more than NF2, lol. I have a KT266A board from 6 years ago still running here at work. One of my laptops uses K8T800M and has been a solid performer for 3 years now. You have to go back to Super 7 to really see some bad VIA stuff, IMO.
I think it's rather ironic that NF4 had the same issues with Creative cards as VIA's old 686A/B southbridges.
VIA's chipset division really seemed to fall right off the map when K8 arrived. Their initial offerings were ok, but then they just started to fall behind and never came back. And around that time, NV and ATI introduced their proprietary multi-GPU solutions.
I have used and had NF1,2,3 and 4 based boards. All have ran flawlessly without issues. Both the NF3 and 4 Asus boards I had and have ran perfectly without issue with the Audigy 2 and the SBLive Platnium that were used with them.
The last time Creative had serious competition was Aureal.
As for Via chipsets, I've had nothing but horrible issues with them. I've had exceptionally great luck with Nvidia nForce2 and nForce4 chipsets. The best platform I ever ran was an Intel chipset. The good old Pentium BX and HX chipsets. I'm fairly impressed by the Intel P965 chipset too.
Clearly you skipped out on NF4 Activearmor.
That right there was the ultimate disaster. It simply does not work right. At best it will just corrupt downloads. At worst, it will blue screen you randomly.NF4 also has the occasional quirks with the NV SATA driver (with some hardware) and the PCIe bus implementation has been found to steal a lot of time from PCI (RME audio did some tests on this; Google it). This causes probs with Creative cards mostly noticeable in OpenAL games using Doom3 engine (did for me, anyway).
I used a NF4 for over a year. It was a great board once I found out what the quirks were. Not any better than my VIA experiences.
The most bug-free experiences I've had are definitely from Intel. Heck, you don't even need to worry about driver updates from them most of the time because the chipsets usually just work with the INF update.
MulciberXP
Regular
After giving up on activearmour, this abit nf4 has been by far the most stable motherboard i've ever owned. had it for 2 years now, its been flawless.
with all the troubleshooting i've done on the nf4 because of activearmour....i can SENSE other peoples problems with nf4 and fix them before they even happen.
with all the troubleshooting i've done on the nf4 because of activearmour....i can SENSE other peoples problems with nf4 and fix them before they even happen.
Heh, the biggest problem with NVIDIA's chipsets bugs IMO is that once they're there, it takes forever for them to go away, because they keep reusing the same chips. MCP51 is still used on a truckload of their midrange offerings, and that's about 2.5 years old now.
I'd definitely be curious to see if some these bugs are still present on MCP6x. I'd presume not, but then again, there might be some new ones too For NVIDIA's own sake, they seriously better get MCP72 and its drivers perfected for launch day, since if they screw that up, their reputation of bugginess will last even much longer...
Having said that, I'm currently on C55+MCP51 and quite happy of the southbridge. Although in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have bought that anyway since I'm not overclocking that much for heat reasons, heh.
I'd definitely be curious to see if some these bugs are still present on MCP6x. I'd presume not, but then again, there might be some new ones too
For NVIDIA's own sake, they seriously better get MCP72 and its drivers perfected for launch day, since if they screw that up, their reputation of bugginess will last even much longer...Having said that, I'm currently on C55+MCP51 and quite happy of the southbridge. Although in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have bought that anyway since I'm not overclocking that much for heat reasons, heh.
This is anecdotal stuff, but in all my time at Hexus reviewing mainboards and core logic sets, I had the best experiences with nForce compared to anything else, and I've consistently used nForce in my own workstation (barring a year or so on i975X after I switched to Core 2 Duo) because of that.
While nForce core logic hasn't always been trouble free (I had serious ActiveArmor issues too with nForce 4), and I skipped ever using nForce 5 personally, I'm still of the opinion that their offerings form the basis for the best consumer mainboards on the market today. Intel are doing the best to dent that, with a strong consumer lineup these days, and my time on i975X was sweet).
As for VIA possibly buggering off out of the core logic market, I don't think the Western consumer would even notice, which says everything.
While nForce core logic hasn't always been trouble free (I had serious ActiveArmor issues too with nForce 4), and I skipped ever using nForce 5 personally, I'm still of the opinion that their offerings form the basis for the best consumer mainboards on the market today. Intel are doing the best to dent that, with a strong consumer lineup these days, and my time on i975X was sweet).
As for VIA possibly buggering off out of the core logic market, I don't think the Western consumer would even notice, which says everything.
I had foxconn that did something like that. I RMA'ed it in the return doesn't. It has nothing to do with the chipset though to be honest. It is something in the power circuitry.
the maddman
Regular
Eh, it's all anecdotal. I have a laptop with the same chipset that works fine, but after two months of hair pulling, I bought my AV8 and am perfectly happy with it.
I'm a weirdo anyways, I'm still partial to SiS Athlon chipsets.
apparently VIA has decided to shift focus from chipsets for third-party processors to chipsets for its own C7 line of CPUs. The company will invest more resources in platforms for "multimedia control, commercial embedded (thin clients, industrial PCs and point of sale terminals), home multimedia and mobile embedded (ultra-mobile devices, set-top boxes, LCD TVs and car electronics)
I'm not aware of many companies which have successfully survived the loss of their economies of scope. While I wish them and their employees the best of luck, I do fear they'll need it.