I am thinking about building a VIA chipset computer.
I would like to know the pro’s and cons about building this ?
Motherboard - Asus CUV4X with VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset.
CPU - VIA C3 , Nehemiah , 1.2ghz.
I do have a VIA c3 1.0ghz thin client which I’ve added an SB Live and installed Freedos but I haven’t had much time to play with it. From what I’ve read the advantages are you can easily control the multiplier, and enable or disable cache to fine tune the speed. Although multiplier control might depend on your chipset. Low power consumption can be a plus too.
Depending on your intended usage, I would say the main disadvantage is the cpu is slow compared to any of its contemporaries. If you were intending to run Win98 or later a Via C3 1.2ghz is probably only equilivant to a Pentium3 650mhz (even that might be generous).
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Yeah, i think that via c3 cpu might be a waist of time. I have read that performance is terrible compared with amd and intel. And finding a compatible motherboard is not easy.
wrote:Yeah, i think that via c3 cpu might be a waist of time. I have read that performance is terrible compared with amd and intel. And finding a compatible motherboard is not easy.
That depends on your intended software.
So far, my VIA system at its limits beats the AMD K6-III+ at its own limits.
That is to say, an AMD K6-III+ at 550MHz is beat by a VIA C3 Nehemiah at 1300MHz hands down.
The thing is, if you want flexibility for a wide range of older DOS games, the C3 Nehemiah is not the way to go. The C3 Samuel or better, the C3 Ezra is the way to go.
I built a K6-III system, tried a Nehemiah 1.2GHz and finally settled on a C3 Ezra-T system on a BX board.
The Ezra-T is by far the most flexible. Runs early Direct3D games very well, rock solid AGP comatibility (compared to SS7 boards) and scales well down to a 386 and hits 486 speeds as well without using CPU throttle trickery.
i have a c3 samuel 800MHz (133x6) and:
Ram performance (even being at 133mhz) is on par with a 440bx at 100MHz
CPU performance trade blows with a Pentium 2 350 (deschutes)
in integer and basic things (office) it feels way faster than the P2, but whenever floating point power is needed (or mmx or 3dnow) it gets a little bit slower than the P2. also the caches are smaller.
DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475
Yeah, I am looking for best CPU performance for gaming. So it appears this VIA C3 is not the way to go.
And components are too expensive for low performance.
