> > > > http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q1/020220/kt333-11.html
> All the graphs on the provided URL were about Quake performance. Games > are mostly about windoze video, which has little to do with real work. Yes, but most games these days are very CPU and memory bandwidth intensive. How else do you propose testing the speed of a motherboard without pushing it's hardware? Because Mozilla does not stress the RAM bandwidth over a continuous amount of time like Q3 does. > > > A) I have serious problems with calling VIA chipsets "handicapped". Intel is > > notorious for handicapping chipsets, VIA is notorious for screwing up > > I don't think Intel has ever intentionally handicapped chipsets, unlike > what they regularly do with CPU's. Just look at the i810e. Capable of driving a 133MHz system bus, it's RAM frequency was fixed at 100MHz. I can come up with more, but it's 1:30AM here and I really don't feel like doing research right now just to prove a point. Intel handicaps their products, both chipsets and processors, in order to keep their idea of what the market should look like in order. > > chipsets. There is an important lack of intent there. VIA also tends to fix > > their mistankes, where Intel is happy to handicap their hardware (i810e, > > Celeron FCPGA, P4 423pin, P4 478pin, the list goes on...). > The PCI performance deficiency survived many VIA chipsets. And VIA fixed it in their chipsets. The latest VIA 4-in-one drivers integrate the PCI timing latency patch, and will install on all VIA chipset-based mainboards including the MVP3 which is the oldest VIA based PCI motherboard I can think of off the top of my head. Also, until the advent of Ultra160 RAID cards and Ultra133 IDE controllers, there were no devices capable of moving data fast enough to expose this problem. VIA did not know they had unintentionally hindered the performance of their products. > > > > AMD chipsets need faster RAM, as do the > > > non-handicapped VIA. SiS support doesn't seem to be mature enough > > > lately, so that leaves only Intel vs. handicapped. > > > Here again, you're throwing out "handicapped" and you're not using it in > > reference to an Intel product. Shame. Also, you're completely missing out on > > ALi which is a decent chipset producer, as long as you don't mind the fact > > that they produce chipsets that don't exactly excel at being "gaming > > garbage." I.E. their RAM bandwidth is not equal to VIAs or AMDs. > > I don't experiment with motherboard brands. I stick with the several > I've used in the past. If they don't offer ALi, then I don't consider > ALi. No ALi chipset board I've ever had opportunity to test was anything > less than a dog compared to its contemporaries. A) ASUS offers an ALI-based mobo. A7A266. B) I never said the ALI board wasn't a dog. Compared to the VIA boards, it is. Compared to the Intel boards, well... > > AMD and VIA chipsets don't "need" faster RAM. They can take advantage of it. > > If the boards using them don't accept PC133 DIMM's, they need the newer, > more expensive, faster RAM. So how is this different than Intel? You've got three chipsets on the Intel end, each support their own type of memory and no other. i845: PC100/133 SDRAM i845.rev2: PC1600/2100 DDR SDRAM i850: PC800 RAMBUS On VIA, you've got two chipsets (Well, four if you count the unimproved models): KT133(a): PC100/133 SDRAM KT266(a): PC1600/2100 DDR SDRAM > > > I'm confused about this patch business. What do they patch, device BIOS > > > code? Drivers? Surely if drivers they would be windoze only, no? I > > > didn't see anything in what I snipped that indicated the patches applied > > > regardless of OS, which to me means windoze only and therefore useless > > > when I boot into Linux or OS/2. > > The "patch" toggles a bit in the chipset that makes the PCI bus timing more > > agressive. Even though VIA still has a patch up for it, most reputable > > I never before heard that chipsets contained anything writable. I could've stated that better. The "patch" is a fix to the VIA 4-in-one drivers in Windows that when run flips a bit in the VIA chipset that makes the PCI bus timing more agressive. Chipsets don't contain any writable storage areas. BIOSes do though. All ASUS, or any other motherboard manufacturer has to do is program the BIOS to flip that tiny bit in the chipset and all is fixed (Well, tweaked technically since nothing was broken to start with). I know ASUS did it, as the fix is integrated into my latest A7V133 firmware.
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