Best Via Drivers For KT266A & WinXP

[Philster]

hey gang, just wondered what VIA drivers you folks are using these days. I'm using the 4.35's right now and noticed VIA have released version 4.37a. Any input would be really appreciated. Thanks a bunch everyone.

Philster

 

[Generalen]

I would like to know too.

 

[Paladin]

Since XP has them built in, and I haven't had any problems with the default, I haven't tried to upgrade.
What version comes with XP, 4.35?

 

[jcmoran]

For what it's worth, I've been told by several that if you've done a clean install of XP, and your system is working fine it's best not to make any upgrades to drivers. The time to upgrade drivers, or so I'm told, is when things are not working fine and a driver is the suspected problem.
Also, before any upgrade you would be well advised to backup your system with Norton Ghost or a similar utility so if things go south, you can restore your system to a point before the upgrade.

 

[DonaldC]

I've read posts where guys have tried to upgrade the VIA driver that came with XP with terrible results. They both had to go back to the XP ones. If it ain't broke....

 

[jhites]

IMHO - Just use the one's with WinXP , if you are doing a fresh install.

I tried the VIA updated drivers and actually performance suffered and even had a lockup.

Using just WinXP - Fresh install - No problems with stability and benchmarks are better. Running XP1600+ @ 144Mhz bus with PAL8045 on a Soyo Dragon Plus.

 

[Mem]

I`ve installed 4.35,4.36,4.37 with no problems with my XP Pro so it`s really up to you, it does not install all the drivers anyway with XP.

It only installs two ,the INF file and PCI ide driver which you can deselect.

 

[Freewolf]

The ones in xp are working fine for me

 

[Workin']

The ones that came with XP work fine for me. Any newer ones break Direct3D on my machine.

 

[Philster]

Thanks everyone for your input. It's much appreciated. Funny thing though. When I installed the 4.35's, mine only installed the .inf driver. The PCI/IDE driver must be on one of the later release's. When I bench test this machine it comes up with excellent results. Take care gang.

Philster.

 

[Newbie77]

I am currently using the Via 4.37a on my Windows XP system without any hiccups (touch wood!). I am not sure whether the new drivers were the contributing factor but I did notice that my memory benchmarks went up quite a bit after I installed it. Previously, after much tweaking, I could achieve 848/916 on the Sandra Sisoft 2001 memory benchmark. On the same memory setting in the bios, I now get 862/945. Hmm..

 

[oakfan]

Jhites - are you using the raid features of the Dragon+ ?

I have a very similar setup to yours and after reading some comments on problems with via based boards I tried using sandra to profile my disks.

Sandra gives an estimate of 36000 for an ata100 raid0 config, where the best I could manage on a new partition was 31400. On my c: partition, with only 1.5 gig spare the score was down to 18100 !!!

I'm using 2 40g maxtor ata133 drives for my raid0, which give a sandra score of 25800 when used on the standard IDE connectors.