VIA chipset & capturing

[spooky]

I am trying to clear something up
I have heard somewhere that it is not a good idea to have a motherboard with a VIA chipset on it for capturing, is that true or not?

[monoxide77]

i have a VIA chipset and i have no problems. on the other hand, i've had problems using SiS chipsets.

[crahak]

I once had a mobo with a via 686 chipset. I GAVE the damn thing away. Even with PCI latency patches and stuff, it would stick suck and BSOD bad. (Especially with SB live's it seems). Besides the crackling sound problems it gave to lots of people and all... I now have 2 boards with SIS chipsets and they're better than the asus/abit/whatever else I've owned so far.

[thefox149]

I have a via and works fine. The only prob I had was the latency prob
with sblive sound cards used a patch (George Breeze's patch check google)
and capping no problem at all

[paulgab]

I'm also using a Via based mobo (KT333) and never had problem with this board when capturing video. Via "used" to belong to the low-performing/quality chipset maker but nowadays they produce very good chipsets especially the newer ones. Start from KT266A to KT400. Uses DDR266, 333 or 400 (except KT266A).

[shred]

I have a Tyan Trinity 400 (S1854) which has the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset.

I was dropping lots of frames (> 25%) at 640x480 and I could only capture at strange rates (33.66, 20.08, but not 29.97)

I applied the pci latency patch from
http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/
and it fixed my problem.

Now I drop 0 frames at 29.97

[Cheesemeister2000]

The Abit KT7A motherboard had latency problems.

The Abit KR7A-133Raid works nice 8)

Cheesemeister

[Will Hay]

I had the Via KT133 and couldn't decide whether my problems were the chipset, my SB 1024 Live or both.
I dropped the motherboard, added a K7S5A MB with SiS and kept the SB 1024 Live.
Best thing I ever did (and George's patch never worked for me).
Will

[LSchafroth]

I have the older ASUS P3V4X and have ran it overclocked from 650Mhz to 911Mhz. It's ran this way for over two years. I rarely reboot or shut if off.

It is a VERY stable system with XP Pro and any other OS I had on it. I can do all my captures even up to 720x576 wiht ease.

I can capture at that rez and check my email and browse the web and not drop a fame.

I've used several other VIA chipsets in the past and currently while building systems and they are very stable.

Lannie

[leebo]

Your best bet is to decide which capture card to get, and visit the manufacturers web site to see which MB's are recommended.

I have not had any problems with VIA based boards, but I am planning on getting a Matrox X100 capture card some time this year. Their web site specifically says the board is incompatable with VIA based MB's.

[crahak]

I had the same sort of problems than silky31, and I'm not surprised at all by leebo's findings

[shred]

VIA chipsets can cause problems.

I had major amounts of dropped frames until I applied the PCI Latency patch. Now everything seems fine.

[donpedro]

Mine work fine (Shuttle AK31A). Is it good idea to apply that "PCI Latency patch" ? Or should I stick with "Why to break it when it is working" ?

[pepegot1]

I have a KT133A VIA chipset on on AMD Athlon system(1.2 Ghz) and no problems. Make sure you have the latest 4in1 Hyperion drivers. In the video game, most vendors focus on Intel-Pinnacle Systems for one. I could not run anything on it. I changed to Ulead and no problems-using ATI64 Meg DDR VIVO card.

[kenmo]

Athlon 1800Xp with an MSI K7T Turbo2 via KT133A chipset and it's bullet proof. Strong as a finely tuned small block Chevy !

[neonflx]

I have an Abit VP6 along with an Audigy and was having issues with sound but after the latency patch problems were resolved 90% still every now and then it reboots by itself cause of the audigy, other than that I capture video using wint tv go with power vcr or dvd workshop, no frame drops, i burn cd and surf the net and do other stuff and have not droped a frame yet (knocking on wood).

[Nelson37]

Some particular VIA chipsets have had problems, mostly in early revisions. I think the KT133A was particularly bad as I recall, but then they revised it and solved the problem. Unfortunately, many distributors continued to sell the problematic boards. To be fair, I have no idea what VIA's return policies are.

Some MBs implementing Via chipsets have had problems with quality control.

The same can be said of virtually every manufacturer and product in the PC business.

You must take into account that VIA is usually the first to implement new AMD features. They also make a large quantity of product. Factor into that required BIOS updates and the numbers of people who either never perform the update or do it incorrectly.

I have installed dozens if not hundreds of VIA based boards, and others, and have not found any unusual number of problems. SiS products, on the other hand, have had more than their share of problems. Now by problems I mean locks, reboots, major specific incompatibilities or performance issues significant enough to say "this board is broken and must be replaced". Most of these were not video capturing, though my 4 different boards have had no problems.

Never buy a newly implemented design, always wait for the first or second revision. I have a regular hardware supplier, I always wait at least 90 days and check the rate of return on a particular item. Even on those returns, purchased by PC techs, a significant number are not defective, the buyer just couldn't figure out how to make it work or it was not what he expected.

[crahak]

I am completely against nelson37's post. I have seen more problems with VIA boards than once can shake a stick at, and that is exactly why I bought SIS based boards, and they're by far the best boards I've seen... Even with BIOS updates, latest 4-in-1's, PCI latency pactches and what not, it seemed that VIA=BSOD... Now that I'm on SIS boards, I have almost forgot what those looked like

I am almost all AMD for it was a lot cheaper to buy AMD, but if there was nothing else than VIA out there, I'd pay the extra and buy Intel, making sure it's nto a VIA based mobo - of course. In fact, they're the only motherboards I've seen problems with...

[Will Hay]

We could be idfentical twin's crahak, I share *exactly* the same sentiment as you (including something I never thought I'd consider, the Intel option!), although I do conceed there are poeple capturing quite happily with Via, there must be, considering their market share.
Will

[Will Hay]

Athlon 1800Xp with an MSI K7T Turbo2 via KT133A chipset and it's bullet proof. Strong as a finely tuned small block Chevy !

And clearly you're capturing with it, right?
I must admit I shared the opinion the KT133a was the worst of the lot, but good luck to you!
Will

[crahak]

Actually, the KT133 is even worse than the KT133A...

[paulgab]

If VIA chipset, just get KT333 based mobo and you dont have to worry about latency issues. In some bechmarks KT333 has even a better latency figure than KT400, that is why a KT400 mobo implimented using a DDR333 memory will lag behing a KT333 w/ a DDR333 memory.

KT333 outperforms SiS730, 735 and even 745 in most aspect but w/ the latest SiS chipset like the 746 and the 746FX, some benchmarks out there shows SiS have taken the lead. Of course if price is not a concern, just get an nForce2 dual channel DDR mobo.

[leebo]

However, from Matrox's site re the X100:

The following chipsets are incompatible for use with Matrox RT.X.
Manufacturer Chipset
VIA (AMD)* KT133A, KT266, KT266A, KT333, KT400
VIA (Intel)* PRO133A, P4X266A

* These VIA chipsets for Intel and AMD processors are not recommended for use with a Matrox RT.X system because they do not work well when editing or playing back segments on the Timeline that contain two video layers, one graphics layer, and a 3D effect. These chipsets have all demonstrated a PCI bandwidth limitation when reading from host memory (RAM). This is seen when heavy PCI bandwidth (such as for video, graphics, and effects) is required by several PCI devices at the same time.

[DaveQB]

I once had a mobo with a via 686 chipset. I GAVE the damn thing away. Even with PCI latency patches and stuff, it would stick suck and BSOD bad. (Especially with SB live's it seems). Besides the crackling sound problems it gave to lots of people and all... I now have 2 boards with SIS chipsets and they're better than the asus/abit/whatever else I've owned so far.

ya hit on the head,

the old 686b south bridge is where the problems are,
it was used in the kt266 and KT133A

the chipsets since then (KT333 on up) have had rid of this latency and CRC problem with data transfer to and from IDE devices.

[read the VIA forums, so guys where going to sue VIA of data lose with the 686B SB]

[blinky]

the old 686b south bridge is where the problems are,
it was used in the kt266 and KT133A

The KT266 does not use the 686b southbridge. The KT266 and higher have the North and South bridges connected by V-LINK and the PCI bus is connected just to the Southbridge, whereas the 686b uses the PCI bus to link to the between the North and Southbridges.

The 686b has used in some Hybrid boards with AMD761 Northbridge e.g. Asus A7M266 and Abit KG7.

The KT266 had a flawed Northbridge with poor memory bandwidth but this was corrected with the KT266A which is a damm fine chipset (it can actually be faster than KT333 and KT400).

The main problem with the Soundblaster Live! was a broken ACPI header which was corrected on the Live 5.1, although Creative never admitted to any fault and continued to blame VIA.

The Live! is notorious for bus hogging and I remember the original Live!

I've just put a PCTV Rave in my parents machine with a A7M266 motherboard and XP2000+ and I've had no problems so far capturing using Ulead VideoStudio 6, although I haven't really had much time to do much capturing. (Sound is captured by C-Media on board sound chip).

[DaveQB]

just checked the via site and i stand corrected on that


no sync problms using the sound card as apoosed to the Capture card ?

[Fozzee]

Hi
I have an AverTv card and a KT3 Ultra (333).
I tried both SB Live 5.1 and SB Live Value.
Both of them crackle on recording of line-in during video capture.
Although the onboard sound does this too.

My question is......

Will buying an Audigy solve my problems???

Or is it Creative rather than "Live" which is the problem?

Cheers

Fozzee

[crahak]

Buying an audigy will most definately NOT solve the issue.

[DaveQB]

is this plugging the source directly into the Line IN or plugging source audio into Capture Card and then using the loopback plug to plug into the Line IN ??

[Fozzee]

Either I think.
Why would it make a difference??

Fozzee