VIA definitely had some troubled series of chipsets, but they are not all bad, and some are actually really good.

Tell us what are you actually building and what motherboard are you trying to get.

Normal brands (or series) of VIA motherboards are close or one-to-one compatible and speedy as Intel stuff 😀

There abnormal hadbraked for compatibility series (for low-cost or office usage) made with Via, Ali, Intel chipset of-cause 🙁

Lylat1an wrote on 2024-04-15, 15:20:

I might be in the market for another motherboard soon, and I recall reading something along those lines once.

It's a rare chipset vendor that never had any compatibility issues...

The most famous Via issue was that the VT82C686B southbridge (found on late P3 and early Athlon and P4 boards) had major compatibility issues with the Creative Sound Blaster Live, worst-case resulting in HDD data corruption.

Aside from that, a lot of people got lazy when Microsoft integrated Intel chipset drivers into Windows 98 and forgot that you basically always need drivers for IDE, AGP and USB. They did not do so for other chipset vendors, including Via. If you neglect to install Via (4-in-1, later Hyperion) chipset drivers immediately after installing Windows, you will have performance and/or stability issues with display and storage. This isn't a chipset issue but a user issue though.

Under DOS no drivers are needed and indeed Via produced some of the best late 486 chipsets (with FIC being the premium brand using them). In P1 era, Via chipsets were a bit behind the curve in terms of performance, but were the first to offer higher bus speeds than 66MHz, making them the logical pairing for Cyric CPUs that ran at 75 or 83MHz. Similarly, in P2/P3 era, Via chipsets weren't the fastest, but supported 133MHz FSB and AGP 4x while Intel was messing around with Rambus (google 'Caminogate' for an example of Intel stuff you want to avoid), and after Intel released the i815 chipset that did offer those features, Via 694X/694D (ApolloPro133a) still offered four times the supported memory.
For Athlon, AMD's 750 Irongate was reliable but no speed demon and Via's KX133 (Slot A) and KT133 (Socket A) were the first to offer 133MHz memory and AGP 4x as well, and KT133A the first to offer 133MHz FSB. Later KT266A, 333 and 400 held the Athlon speed crown until nVidia went dual channel with the nForce. Via chipsets for P4 and Athlon64 were never really outstandig, but offered the option to have both PCIe and AGP (something only ULi also did) for a smooth upgrade path - or for the retro builder wanting a Frankenbuild.

TLDR: don't combine 686B with SBLive, and remember to install chipset drivers first after OS install. Then you'll be fine.

So there are a lot of situations where Via chipsets might be the best options and some where they are less great. What era/CPU are you thinking of?

VIA chipsets were generally good.

The issues that I had were often related to:
1) Drivers: Intel invested more resources into driver & software development and sometimes it took VIA longer to get the bugs & quirks out of its drivers.
2) Power: Intel left the AT platform early while VIA got to deal with customers trying to use 10 year old AT power supplies on 500MHz system with mixed results.
3) Discount Brands: The VIA brand was sometimes tainted by the engineering quality of some low cost OEMs that chose VIA chipsets

dionb wrote on 2024-04-15, 18:22:

Intel was messing around with Rambus (google 'Caminogate' for an example of Intel stuff you want to avoid)

Avoid? Rambus P4 systems sell at a significant premium these days. You'd be lucky to have one. But ironically, FDIV Pentiums are also more valuable than their fully functional replacements. They both eventually found value in obsolescence by hitting on that special combination of infamy & rarity. =)

dionb wrote on 2024-04-15, 18:22:

Lylat1an wrote on 2024-04-15, 15:20:

I might be in the market for another motherboard soon, and I recall reading something along those lines once.

So there are a lot of situations where Via chipsets might be the best options and some where they are less great. What era/CPU are you thinking of?

I would like to re-use my 500MHz AMD K6-2 CPU if possible.

As for era, I think late 98SE games would be the most recent I'd install, but most would be in DOS 6.22.

Can anyone advise a reason not to get this board that includes the box, manual, driver disc, and rear I/O cables?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/305477615490

I imagine I can overcome the slow IDE speeds with an add-in card. And although my CPU's speed isn't in the manual, I should be able to set the jumpers for it.

One aspect where I saw definite problems with Via chipsets is early AGP board + early AGP graphics cards. My socket 370 Via boards would often lock up or crash when used with flaky AGP cards from 1997-1998, whereas the 440bx handled the old cards just fine. And no amount of bios tweaking allowed me to avoid the crashes on Via boards.

The Abit VH6T with a Via Apollo Pro 133T chipset is one of the most stable boards (after recapping) that I own. It's my retro "daily driver", so to speak.

I only encountered one problem with it, I can't run Archimedian Dynasty with a Voodoo II, the game either never turns on the monitor or it simply closes. That might be a problem of the Tualatin CPU being too fast, though.

Apart from that, I never had any problem that I wasn't able to solve. 98SE does need the chipset drivers (4.35) to work well.

Depends if you like PCI sound cards and non-3dfx AGP cards. 😀 (regarding MVP)

douglar wrote on 2024-04-15, 18:49:

dionb wrote on 2024-04-15, 18:22:

Intel was messing around with Rambus (google 'Caminogate' for an example of Intel stuff you want to avoid)

Avoid? Rambus P4 systems sell at a significant premium these days. You'd be lucky to have one. But ironically, FDIV Pentiums are also more valuable than their fully functional replacements. They both eventually found value in obsolescence by hitting on that special combination of infamy & rarity. =)

Er, did you check what the Caminogate I was referring to was about? It wasn't about the i850(E) P4 Rambus chipsets but about the P3 i820 chipset, in particular its first incarnation with 3 RIMM slots, followed by the MTH (SDRAM to RDRAM translater) debacle. Later i820 boards with 2 RIMM slots and no MTH were OK and i840 was great if you could find it (and they didn't slap two MTHs onto its board...)

leileilol wrote on 2024-04-16, 05:23:

Depends if you like PCI sound cards and non-3dfx AGP cards. 😀 (regarding MVP)

The issues of very early MVP3 boards with 3Dfx AGP cards weren't due to the chipset but due to poor board design, with the voltage regulators not being able to accomodate the full AGP spec power draw. If you tried to do so, they had a nasty habit of burning out the board. In the day the V3-3000 AGP was the prime cause, but you could do it with any other more hefty AGP card just as easily...

Lylat1an wrote on 2024-04-15, 19:44:

Can anyone advise a reason not to get this board that includes the box, manual, driver disc, and rear I/O cables?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/305477615490

I imagine I can overcome the slow IDE speeds with an add-in card. And although my CPU's speed isn't in the manual, I should be able to set the jumpers for it.

OP, the relevant part of leileilol's comment above it that there were design issues with some of the first Socket 7 AGP boards relating to AGP power delivery. More specifically the first boards by FIC, i.e. the PA-2013 (ATX) and this VA-503+ (baby AT).

So what AGP card were you thinking of using? Basically anything with large heatsink and/or fan is a bad combination with these boards. Later boards with Via MVP3 chipset don't suffer from this issue.

It appears you want to run a K6-2 500. That narrows down your choice of chipset to three in-spec and a couple more out of spec and/or without AGP support. Focusing on chipsets that will let it run at full 5x100MHz speed with an AGP card:

Via MVP3:
+ no specific compability issues (unless very late board paired with 686B southbridge, then won't work with SBLive)
+ very flexible in terms of PCI/memory clocks (although you probably just want to run the former at 33MHz and the latter at 100MHz which the other two chipsets can also do)
+ can be paired with very large L2 cache for slightly better performance and much larger cachable area. But boards with 2MB are rare as hen's teeth...
- 4-in-1 drivers can be fiddly, particlarly early releases. Later releases stable, but more overhead.

Ali Aladdin V:
+ fastest raw performance per MHz and MB of cache of the three
+ can be clocked well above 100MHz FSB, 120MHz is common and 133MHz not unknown.
+ F and G revision can cache any amount of memory
- compatibility with specifically nVidia AGP cards flakey. BIOS updates and playing around with AGP miniport driver and Detonator driver versions can usually get things running, but it can be a pain.
- E revision and earlier can only cache 64MB in WB or 128MB in WT (not relevant for DOS, as 64MB is already too much...)

SiS 5591
- early revisions struggled to reach 100MHz bus speed, only stable at 95MHz.
- almost exclusively used on low end boards (PC Chips...) with bad build quality and thus stability.

There are also chipsets with integrated VGA (Via MVP4, ALi Aladdin 7 and SiS 530/540) but they sacrifice memory bandwidth in doing so and don't offer an AGP slot as an alternative. Avoid. You can also set the K6-2 to 6x multiplier and reach 500MHz using 6x75MHz. This allows you to use older Intel, SiS, Via and VLSI chipsets, but performance will be lower and aside from some very obscure corner cases (eg. you want EISA slots...) no benefits.

As you can see, there is no clear 'best' in all cases. Depending on what other hardware you intend to add, both MVP3 and Aladdin V can be equally good options, so tell us more about what you want. Also, USD 160 seems very expensive to me. You should be able to find similar hardware for less. 'New in box' is hardly of added value if you intend to use the part yourself.