ALI vs. VIA

[TimeKeeper]

Ali's Revision C. chipset, just introduce not too long ago, has improve its performance to Via KT266a level. (many test shown it can outperform SiS).................... I only tried Soyo K7ADA for couple weeks though and I can't really said I want to keep it.

Via still has the edge in performance as well as OVERCLOCKING........I am currently using Shuttle AK31A
(I have no stability problem since its KT133 era and I still don't understand why "people" has problem w/ VIA)

SiS735 is pretty good too. (I have Chaintech 7SID in my wife's system)
It is quite stable but NOT as fast as VIA. Overclocking option w/ this board is almost non existance -can't increase VCORE to get the true stability.

That's be fair, if you want to spend $30 for a golden finger to get that extra 200Mhz, Why don't you just use that $30 to buy extra 400mhz? (it is the different between 1Ghz and 1.4Ghz T-bird)

 

[NFS4]

<< That's be fair, if you want to spend $30 for a golden finger to get that extra 200Mhz, Why don't you just use that $30 to buy extra 400mhz? (it is the different between 1Ghz and 1.4Ghz T-bird) >>


B/C according to Pabster, the ECS K7S5A is the best thing since sliced bread and an extra $30 just to be able to overclock is more important to him than buying a faster processor w/the $30. Or better yet, buying a board with more features

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

It's pretty silly how uneducated people are before they go spouting off comments about ALi and how "slow" they're supposed to be. The Rev. C of their new chipset is as fast as 266A, and in some cases faster. It's always good to maybe read an article or two before going off and saying how a company "is suck" not knowing much about it.

Anyways.. I guess ya know my vote. But I've had bad luck with Via boards.. took my Dragon 2 weeks to get running well and stable, Shuttle came DOA.. however my "slow, crappy and unstable" ALi board by IWill, the XP333-R has been just as fast as the other two and it worked straight out of the box. Oh well. Everyone's personal experience is different.

 

[InsaneTBONE]

Are you able to give some links to the Ali Rev C. reviews?

 

[GmanBat]

I have the Asus A7A266 mobo with a Radeon VE. I work in digital audio and recently desired to move up to 24 bit recording. I checked out the RME cards which are highly regarded in the home recording circles.

Here's is what I ran into on the "Hardware Warning" page:


"Asus A7A266 and Iwill KA266-R with chipset ALiMAGIK 1

Several users report significant performance problems when using the Hammerfall and DIGI96 series. The Hammerfall can't be used even at the highest latency setting, the DIGI96 series shows sub-average performance.

Comment: As far as we know the Ali chipset MAGIK 1 is the slowest of all DDR-RAM chipsets, it is even slower than the fastest PC133 chipset. Additionally it offers a PCI-bus performance that can hardly be lower. The Hammerfall, which requires a constant transfer rate of 9 MByte/s (52 channels I/O at 44.1 kHz), can't be used with this board at all. The DIGI96 series works, but suffers from bad performance. While DIGICheck will normally measure a transfer rate of more than 30 MByte/s (on Intel boards up to 130 MByte/s, which is the maximum transfer rate of the PCI-bus), the ALi-based boards reach sensational 8 (eight) MByte/s. Therefore we have to warn against boards using this ALi chipset. And we are not alone. Hauppauge, manufacturer of TV cards, also mentions the ALi chipset as critical. "

Needles to say I was saddened by this. I had my heart set on this card. I'm considering replacing the mobo.

What say you?

 

[Athlon4all]

I have very little experience. I've used an MSi Aladdin V board, and I had pretty much nothing but trouble with it. VIA, I've used an MVP3 and a KM133 board. The KM133, I'm on it now, has worked great. Only problem being with running memory at agressive timings, but not a big deal. It's stable. The MVP3, I don't use myself. It was for a friend, but anyway, once I got it setup, it works great. So, from my experience, VIA over ALi. But, I think that the MAGiK as long as performance is on par with VIA, I'd consider it, but truthfully, I'd personally take a VIA over XP333R but there's probably nothing wrong with it.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

It's pretty silly how uneducated people are before they go spouting off comments about ALi and how "slow" they're supposed to be. The Rev. C of their new chipset is as fast as 266A, and in some cases faster. It's always good to maybe read an article or two before going off and saying how a company "is suck" not knowing much about it.

Were you referring to reviews such as this? The rev. C is indeed faster than the B0 stepping, but it still has a ways to go. Even when benched against the MSI KT7 pro2 (arguably one of the slowest of the KT266A boards) it underperforms. That doesn't mean that your average user would be able to tell the difference between it and a KT266A board. I especially like the way Iwill polled the major computer enthusiast forums to get information on "what you would like in a motherboard and chipset". That's something we'll probably never see VIA do...


Bye the way, I take exception to being called "uneducated". I was skooled good by my techers.

 

[Tanked]

I would go with ALi over VIA, although i'm basing this on old chipset data (Aladdin V versus MVP3...The MVP3 has been giving me a boatload of AGP problems). I don't know about the KT266A and such...I haven't used them.
Also, the 686B southbridge on my AMD760 board has been giving me problems. I can't use the 4in1 patch (because the northbridge is not VIA). I've also had severe lockup problems with an older VP3 board from VIA.
Of course, this is all about 3 years old... =P

 

[AA0]

With the 760 chipset, you are only supposed to use part of the 4 in 1 drivers, just use the same ones on your motherboard CD. You can download them separately from the web.

 

[Sunner]

Seems to me like Pabster simply doesn't have a clue how to build computers

Maybe you should simply stick to Dell's and Compaq's Pabster

 

[Tanked]

Oh, I forgot - Someone mentioned that VIA has the fastest Socket A chipset on the market - not even the CPU manufacturer can match VIA!"
Trust me, if AMD tried, they could. They're chipset was released far before the KT266A; but as we all know, AMD did not (and still doesn't) want to get into the chipset business.
Even still, if I had a choice between the KT266A and AMD760, i'd still go with AMD's.

EDIT: Messed up the bold syntax

 

[Pabster]

Sunner: Yeah, I'll just stick to Dell. Might be worth it to avoid those hot-running AMD chips and those damn VIA chipsets.

I'd also recommend 760 over KT266A. The only negative to that is that every 760 board uses the ubiquitous VIA 686B South Bridge. No thanks.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

<FONT face=Verdana size=1>InsaneTBONE: just take a look at any of the IWill XP333 reviews. I believe it's the only mobo that uses the new stepping of the ALi chipset.

Linky-poo

edit: stupid copy and paste. i'm too lazy.. </FONT>