VIA KT400A. *3-31-03 UPDATE*

[Peter]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Peter, I'll try it again sometime, but it's not like I didn't try everything under the sun already. With the PCI-based USB 2.0 controller enabled, peak SCSI-to-PCI throughput was a dismal 49Mb/sec. With the USB 2.0 disabled, it was still only 72Mb/sec. VIA patches, BIOS updates, altered PCI-latency settings, different drivers, different PCI slots... name something you think I haven't tried yet.

Well with PCI USB 2.0 (and Windows?), remaining PCI bandwidth will suck on any chipset. Other people (including me) have been getting beyond-100 MB/s throughput even on ancient VIA chipsets ... once they've been set up correctly, and of course as long as there's no SB!Live in the system (which requires putting the brakes on PCI to keep the SB!Live's PCI bug from freezing the system). Note that there's lots more to it than just the well known PCI Latency Timer setting.

 

[JoshuaWood]

(opps, msg was in wrong place. Missread the A at the end of KT400. I've moved it elsewhere)

 

[RideFree]

konichiwa,

or seeming so close? If its more than a month I'm just going for an nf2) I may have to wait

You may as well go for the nf2 as the 400A (if it were released today) would take a month to hit the retail/wholesale chanels.
It would take at least another month for the issues (like driver, etc.) to hit the forums and then about another month for the fix(es) to show up.

IMHO, the nf2 is real - right now - and worth the effort. In order for the 400A to become interesting over the nf2 solutions that are on line right now, the performance boost would need to be in excess of 10% and I doubt that we will see that. So, your good question(s) will be answered in the next couple of months and as you state, that is beyond your time-frame.

Just my $.02 worth.

 

[lsman]

with sis746 (and 746FX) (ECS L7S7A2, hope it will as low price as K7S5A) coming out. Hope AT can get a compare also.

 

[konichiwa]

RideFree:

Yeah, I thought about that after I posted and decided I'd just go ahead and order. So I've got a 8RDA+ on the way, but I couldn't convince myself not to wait a week (only a week, if nothing by then, I'm ordering) to see what Barton looks like.

I've got everything but a CPU and Video Card now, it will come in time!

 

[Angus]

for the kt400a, i wonder how is the pci bus performance and the bandwidth?

since pci bus bandwidth is becoming a bottleneck as ide/ata controller, usb2, firewire and all other pci device can support high and faster speed now.

in addition, i want to know how well is it support ddr333 and ddr400. there re a lot more room to improve it.

for on board usb2 and firewire, i want to know how well is the performance and how is the cpu usage. i do experienced some slowdown when enable/using the on board firewire.

 

[Peter]

You missed a piece of history there ... everything that's integrated into the south bridge no longer is eating from PCI bandwidth. Ever since Intel, VIA and SiS moved to connecting the south bridge on a fast proprietary bus (HubLink, V-Link, MuTIOL respectively).

 

[tboo]

I dont know about you guys, but I am getting sick of VIA coming out with these "revised" chipsets.

 

[Peter]

Yeah right. Just look at how many iterations of the Intel 845 have come and gone, and you'll think different about VIA's few.

 

[tboo]

I havent owned an intel product since the athlon came out-so I cant comment on their motherboards. I can comment on via based boards since that is about all Ive owned(except for a few nforce/nforce 2 boards-which I have now). I was ticked when i got the Kt133 & then they came out with the kt133a, then the kt266/266a & now the same thing with the 400/400a. It would be nice if they could get it right on the 1st try. Each one was "this is the chipset to get with this memory/cpu combination" & a few months later we find out that they it wasnt the chipset to get & they will will come out with a revised/improved version. Dont get me wrong, Ill still buy via based motherboards-just gwish they would get it right the 1st time around.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

what happen to Evan, did he like disappear in the underground batcave like testing labs??
lol

 

[pillage2001]

Originally posted by: tboo
I havent owned an intel product since the athlon came out-so I cant comment on their motherboards. I can comment on via based boards since that is about all Ive owned(except for a few nforce/nforce 2 boards-which I have now). I was ticked when i got the Kt133 & then they came out with the kt133a, then the kt266/266a & now the same thing with the 400/400a. It would be nice if they could get it right on the 1st try. Each one was "this is the chipset to get with this memory/cpu combination" & a few months later we find out that they it wasnt the chipset to get & they will will come out with a revised/improved version. Dont get me wrong, Ill still buy via based motherboards-just gwish they would get it right the 1st time around.

It's a trend dude. Never buy any first revision of any VIA's chipset.

 

[Peter]

tboo, if you throw an anger free look at what's been going on, these quick chipset iterations were all about supporting new CPU variations, and about enhancing performance.

The former thing is fuelled (and dramatically accelerated) by the hot CPU race between Intel and AMD. As long as these two keep one-upping each other, chipsets have to change just as quickly.

The latter is a good thing ... coming from chipset competition itself. Back in the days, there was none. SiS made the bottom feed stuff, Intel had the performance end, VIA and ALi sat somewhere inbetween. Then Intel screwed up theirs, VIA got big because they had the only chipset that actually worked AND had good performance. ALi faded while SiS finally entered the performance area.
Now we have real competition there too.

And hey, just because there's a faster KT400A soon, that doesn't make your KT400 a bad chipset. It was top of the range when it came out. It's just that the performance frenzy has made every generation of chipsets and CPUs incredibly short lived. At the bottom end, things move much more slowly.

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: pillage2001

Originally posted by: tboo
I havent owned an intel product since the athlon came out-so I cant comment on their motherboards. I can comment on via based boards since that is about all Ive owned(except for a few nforce/nforce 2 boards-which I have now). I was ticked when i got the Kt133 & then they came out with the kt133a, then the kt266/266a & now the same thing with the 400/400a. It would be nice if they could get it right on the 1st try. Each one was "this is the chipset to get with this memory/cpu combination" & a few months later we find out that they it wasnt the chipset to get & they will will come out with a revised/improved version. Dont get me wrong, Ill still buy via based motherboards-just gwish they would get it right the 1st time around.

It's a trend dude. Never buy any first revision of any VIA's chipset.

i agree. the KT266 sucked. the KT266A rocked.
i do hope VIA has got the same performance boost for the KT400 and KT400A like the KT266 and KT266A.

 

[Mem]

I dont know about you guys, but I am getting sick of VIA coming out with these "revised" chipsets

It`s only a problem if you upgrade every 5 minutes ,I`m still using a VIA KT133 and KT266a board (both solid),I guess VIA feels they can improve on the KT400 chipset and there`s a market for it,also it`ll give the nForce2 a run for its money,remember buying a motherboard is like buying a video card, its not fast for long .

 

[RideFree]

remember buying a motherboard is like buying a video card, its not fast for long

But Mem, at least it's halfast for a while...
Of course, you're also correcto!

 

[RideFree]

Quoted from Peter
It's just that the performance frenzy has made every generation of chipsets and CPUs incredibly short lived. At the bottom end, things move much more slowly.

Exactly right-on. And the cycle seems to be speeding up and up and up...you'd think it violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

Originally posted by: bgeh

Originally posted by: pillage2001

Originally posted by: tboo
I havent owned an intel product since the athlon came out-so I cant comment on their motherboards. I can comment on via based boards since that is about all Ive owned(except for a few nforce/nforce 2 boards-which I have now). I was ticked when i got the Kt133 & then they came out with the kt133a, then the kt266/266a & now the same thing with the 400/400a. It would be nice if they could get it right on the 1st try. Each one was "this is the chipset to get with this memory/cpu combination" & a few months later we find out that they it wasnt the chipset to get & they will will come out with a revised/improved version. Dont get me wrong, Ill still buy via based motherboards-just gwish they would get it right the 1st time around.

It's a trend dude. Never buy any first revision of any VIA's chipset.

i agree. the KT266 sucked. the KT266A rocked.
i do hope VIA has got the same performance boost for the KT400 and KT400A like the KT266 and KT266A.

kt333 was, imo, the ONLY chipset they got right on the first try LOL

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

Originally posted by: Mem

I dont know about you guys, but I am getting sick of VIA coming out with these "revised" chipsets

It`s only a problem if you upgrade every 5 minutes ,I`m still using a VIA KT133 and KT266a board (both solid),I guess VIA feels they can improve on the KT400 chipset and there`s a market for it,also it`ll give the nForce2 a run for its money,remember buying a motherboard is like buying a video card, its not fast for long .

heh i still have an a7v (kt133) board i use as main machine, but it will change to kt400 soon

im not about to ditch my a7v however hehe

 

[FacelessNobody]

I'm interested to see if VIA will adopt a similar marketing approach to nVidia's with these boards. I know VIA already has their own LAN, 6-channel sound, firewire, and USB2 chips (I have em all on my P4PB 400), but will they push these along with the KT400A northbridge? I guess we'll see soon.

 

[Peter]

That's all integrated into the south bridge anyway. All that's needed is the physical interface chips, aka codecs, which of course can be bought from VIA too. It's all up to the mainboard makers to use those features.

 

[pillage2001]

Dayum. quick.....I'm waiting for it.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: FacelessNobody
I'm interested to see if VIA will adopt a similar marketing approach to nVidia's with these boards. I know VIA already has their own LAN, 6-channel sound, firewire, and USB2 chips (I have em all on my P4PB 400), but will they push these along with the KT400A northbridge? I guess we'll see soon.

I think VIA is working on a stand alone sound card and a updated sound system. Don't know if it will come to light anytime soon, but with the sound that nivida has in theirs VIA will prob. try something.

 

[Regalk]

Originally posted by: ChampionAtTufshop
what happen to Evan, did he like disappear in the underground batcave like testing labs??
lol

He probably did. The whole idea was to start you guys drooling and knocking heads - an all too familiar ploy. My A7N8X is good enough for me to ignore VIA this round. I had 4 VIA boards at one time - now down to 2 and soon "0".

 

[acid16]

Originally posted by: mr-evil

I doubt anyone needs more than 533mb/sec though.

Funny, Bill Gates doubted anyone needed more than 640k at one time also.....sorry, just had to throw that out there. Intel has already announced their intentions for an 800mb chipset, so 533 is old news already.

Food for thought...

Ahh this old quote again. Well, can't blame him.. I mean, computers dont need more than 640k in reality for what Bill Gates originally intended them to be for (documents). However, the world evolved and people started storing music and other stuff on their computers, which is optional. I still don't think bill gates was every really wrong. I still have an old apple computer with like, a really small hard drive and probably 30mb of ram or something, it works like a charm for what it does. But anyways, I get tired of people quoting that stupid bill gates line. I mean, I could put 40000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 GB of data onto hard drives if I wanted to, but bill gates was thinking rationally. He was just wrong in his wording though, he should have said "640k outta be enough for anyone, except for people who put music onto computers just cause they dont have lives and sit at their computer all day and are too lazy to walk up and use the CD player in their living room". But who am I to critisizing, im listening to mp3's right now too ............... but only cause im forced to.