A chipset not for the fainthearted
Apr 02 '01 (Updated Apr 06 '01)
The Bottom Line Too much incompatibilities with my other hardware force me to not recommend it for inexperienced users.
The story
Looking for an upgrade for my 1998 Soyo 6BA+ (with Intel's 440 BX'chipset) motherboard in my local computershop I was in fact looking for an Asus Cus L2-motherboard with Intel's 815-chipset on board. Unfortunately my dealer wasn't stocking those motherboards and it would have had to be ordered. So instead I left with an Abit LH6 which comes with the (in)famous Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset instead. It was also some seventy American dollars cheaper than the Asus would have costed me, which is not negligable of course.
The board and the chipset do offer some more modern features like AGP 4x support, ATA66 IDE, support for 133Mhz SDram and many overclocking options with various settings for CPU voltage and bus speed.
For those of you who might wonder, I did visit the Abit site for the latest bios version and the Via site to download the latest 4-in-1 drivers because, using a Windows OS, without them you are sure to run into trouble with motherboards equipped with Via chipsets..
Now onto the real life performance of the Motherboard-Chipset combination: I can already start by saying I really regret this purchase and looking back I would gladly have paid more for the Asus board.
Why, you ask. Well, for several reasons:
1. Hauppage cards
I am also the 'proud' owner of a Hauppage WinTV capture card and upon consulting their site after experiencing some serious anomalies with TV playback I found out that Hauppage doesn't guarantee the good working of their card on motherboards equipped with Via's chipsets. I really was having trouble as TV playback came with a lot of streaking. Hauppage had this to say about it :
"Causes for System Lockups: Some non-INTEL PCI controller chipsets on the motherboard will not allow the WinTV to bus-master video into VGA cards, and therefore will cause a system lockup. All motherboards which use Intel PCI bus controllers work with the WinTV. Also, if your motherboard chipset is compliant to PCI 2.1 specifications, you should be o.k.
Known chipsets that will cause lockups are certain SIS, VIA, UMC, ALI, and some OPTI. Our latest software has some added updates for SIS and VIA incorporated in the software which may address the problem. If the problem persists, sometimes the motherboard manufacturer may provide an updated BIOS which can fix the problem. Also, if the board is based on a VIA chipset, some updates available at VIA's website may also address the issue (http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm)"
Luckily, after what seemed as almost endless experimenting with several Bios settings I managed to get rid of that annoyance so now I can even run full screen TV without a glitch.
2. The glamorous AGP 4X feature
For Via Apollo Pro 133A motherboards, this feature can only be activated by plunging into the Windows' registry and is not activated by default in Windows, even when the Bios setting for it is selected. This is a confirmed problem with the chipset.
3. This chipset combined with Geforce 2 MX cards
The combination of the Apollo Pro 133A and the Geforce 2 MX is the source of lockups in fast 3D games the likes of UnrealTournament and Heavy Metal FAKK2. Whole sites are dedicated to curing these lockups and none give a clear answer, for those of you concerned by this phenomenon, here's a good example of a site dealing with this particular problem:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/#hw:gef:troub:inst:lockup
4. Sisoft Sandra 2000
In this benchmarking and analysis tool, forget using all the buttons for whatever involves the motherboard and the chipset the likes of "Motherboard information", "Memory benchmark", and others: they lock up solid on this system. Sisoft Sandras says this about it on their site : "VIA support: Due to lack of data, not all the latest hardware is supported. We're doing our best."
Update April 6th: In fact in the Sisoft 2001 se version these problems have now been dealt with, so if you want to run benchmarks make sure you download this latest version.
Conclusion
So I really don't know what to think of all this,
- either hardware and software developers (e.g. Hauppage, Nvidia) only comply with Intel's way of doing things,
- Via doesn't provide sufficient feedback to other manufacturers,
- Microsoft and its operating systems only favor Intel chipsets, or, finally,
- Via's Apollo Pro 133A chipset simply stinks.
One thing is clear: It takes enormous fiddling and this both in the motherboard Bios and the Windows registry and the use of special utilities to get this chipset to work correctly with all kinds of hardware, which makes that personally I am fed up with it. I don't think it's Abit who has to to take all the blame for all these mishaps but mostly Via. Forcing customers to go looking into all directions just to make the motherboard and chipset behave correctly and optimally is not an acceptable policy for me.
After reading this and for those of you who have read my Celeron overclocking review as well, you may think that I am on Intel's payroll, but rest assured, I am not. I can only report to you what I have experienced myself and although I don't like monopolies I can't help to think that all in all Intel products are not so bad. Intel does cock up as well from time to time (remember their troublesome 1,13 Ghz CPU and the i820 chipset with its memory issues) but at least their products work without too much fuss and most of the times better than the competition (e.g. Via). All this could be due to the fact that Microsoft still favours Intel products over others, so does this mean that the Wintel era is far from over ?
If, like me, you are stuck with the Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset and you do want to persevere and unleash all its (hidden) powers you simply must go browse through this site for cures for the above described problems:http://viahardware.com/.
Be warned, this chipset really is not for the fainthearted !
Credits
With special thanks to Vicwang for his input for this article.
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isvikthere
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About Me:
Amongst other things, a computer hardware enthusiast who writes only about things I know/own.
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