VIA has tacitly confirmed that it's quitting the PC chipset business, claiming that there's no longer a third-party chipset market worth the name.
Richard Brown, VIA's marketing chief, told Custom PC: "We believed that ultimately the third-party chipset market would disappear... That has indeed come to pass."
VIA's perspective …
Can I have the week-or-so of my life back that I've spent trying to get your shitty motherboard chipsets to work with numerous graphics cards / soundcards / OS's / and, once, even a USB adapter card using YOUR OWN FUCKING USB CHIPSET.
Good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.
At least Via can concentrate on their ultra-mini-tiny computer business. Mobile ITX should be a revolution- an x86 PC of a size you could comfortably fit in your wallet. If they're available at a decent price point (a couple of hundred quid) I can see them really taking off- I for one can think of a load of different places I could use them!
It's the one with the 10-machine server farm and battery pack built into its lining.
There's a Via chipset on the Abit KT7 RAID mobo in my garage. It was my main PC for a while even had my 1Ghz TBird doing 1.4+Ghz on it. It has been running 24/7 with the occasional reboot for about 5 years now although at 1.1Ghz. It is used as a media/file server. When competition thins in any area it is a sad thing.
Not necessarily. As long as there is SOME competition, the situation is far from unbearable. In fact, some may welcome it since it helps narrow options while still keeping the competitive spirit going. The performance graphics market has been a two-horse race for years (only recently has Intel declared intentions to enter it) with barely a complaint.
Wow, i'm going to miss these guys. Yeah their chipsets weren't the most stable, but once you got them running, most of their components would chug along for years. Also you can't argue they were probably the best bang for buck.
(I wonder if i'm going to lose driver support on my via motherboard, sound card, and graphics card i've been running for 5 years now)
Tux? Becuase I've built many low cost systems linux systems with this chipset
One week?!?!?!? You lucky sod, I lost that on my first VIA mobo, and I had at least three others that were worse. Alas the things you do when the wallet is light.
Still running a KT7A here as rip/encode/burn machine and its as stable as hell. Still have one or two bad memories of AMD K62's on VIA chipsets tho....
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! If you installed the Via driver (on Win95, this was when Win98 was too new) the IDE driver couldn't cope with simultaneous transfers to multiple devices. Like when you install software from an IDE CD-ROM to your IDE hard drive. VC5 installer fortunately checksummed the installed files, and spotted it for me.
Oh, and the PCI bus was set up wrong, so simultaneously drawing to the screen and playing audio didn't work.
I restarted my machine so many times the CD-ROM drive died.
The PCI timing bug continued until quite recently.
Perhaps this is a good thing. So far, Via's own chips and chipsets seem to not have been given the proper attention. I personally won't touch Via based boards with a barge pole, they're nothing but trouble, both with Windows and Linux.
If this means Via is now going to put 100% effort into their own stuff, their mobos might actually suck less, which would be a good thing, cause real competition is always a good thing.
Perhaps Via will learn a lesson from AMD. The Geode LX800 chipset rocks and consumes less energy, no driver problems. Windows, Linux, BSD or VxWorks, they always work like a charm.
nVidia are happy to soldier on with their motherboard products cause they're planning to move into the CPU market, then they'll be in the same chipset providing position as AMD and Intel
Register
VIA heralds end of third-party PC chipset biz
VIA has tacitly confirmed that it's quitting the PC chipset business, claiming that there's no longer a third-party chipset market worth the name. Richard Brown, VIA's marketing chief, told Custom PC: "We believed that ultimately the third-party chipset market would disappear... That has indeed come to pass." VIA's perspective …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 15:40 GMT
Anonymous Coward
VIA, before you go... #
Can I have the week-or-so of my life back that I've spent trying to get your shitty motherboard chipsets to work with numerous graphics cards / soundcards / OS's / and, once, even a USB adapter card using YOUR OWN FUCKING USB CHIPSET.
Good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 15:40 GMT
Anonymous Coward
Well #
At least Via can concentrate on their ultra-mini-tiny computer business. Mobile ITX should be a revolution- an x86 PC of a size you could comfortably fit in your wallet. If they're available at a decent price point (a couple of hundred quid) I can see them really taking off- I for one can think of a load of different places I could use them!
It's the one with the 10-machine server farm and battery pack built into its lining.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 15:40 GMT
bobbles31
Soldiering on? #
Surely Nvidia are Soldering on? eh eh, get it?
(The one with a Maplins catalogue in the pocket, thanks)
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 16:25 GMT
adnim
KT7 Raid #
There's a Via chipset on the Abit KT7 RAID mobo in my garage. It was my main PC for a while even had my 1Ghz TBird doing 1.4+Ghz on it. It has been running 24/7 with the occasional reboot for about 5 years now although at 1.1Ghz. It is used as a media/file server. When competition thins in any area it is a sad thing.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 16:27 GMT
Nano nano
"leverage" -> "use" #
... where applicable, please.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 18:32 GMT
Charles
Re: KT7 Raid #
Not necessarily. As long as there is SOME competition, the situation is far from unbearable. In fact, some may welcome it since it helps narrow options while still keeping the competitive spirit going. The performance graphics market has been a two-horse race for years (only recently has Intel declared intentions to enter it) with barely a complaint.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 18:32 GMT
Tammer Salem
Like losing a friend #
Wow, i'm going to miss these guys. Yeah their chipsets weren't the most stable, but once you got them running, most of their components would chug along for years. Also you can't argue they were probably the best bang for buck.
(I wonder if i'm going to lose driver support on my via motherboard, sound card, and graphics card i've been running for 5 years now)
Tux? Becuase I've built many low cost systems linux systems with this chipset
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 20:07 GMT
Olly Simmons
Re: VIA, before you go... #
One week?!?!?!? You lucky sod, I lost that on my first VIA mobo, and I had at least three others that were worse. Alas the things you do when the wallet is light.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 20:07 GMT
Thomas
Consolidation of the market #
Will hopefully at least make trying to get all your Windows drivers to play together nicely a little easier?
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 22:11 GMT
Anonymous Coward
But... #
How will we spot low-quality MBs with flaky drivers if they no longer sport the VIA scarlet letters?
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 22:48 GMT
Graham Lockley
Still Running #
Still running a KT7A here as rip/encode/burn machine and its as stable as hell. Still have one or two bad memories of AMD K62's on VIA chipsets tho....
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 23:38 GMT
Alan W. Rateliff, II
Dont worry about Intel's SLI #
Intel is really good at screwing up video, so were I Nvidia, I would not be concerned about Intel and SLI.
Paris, really good at screwing it up in video.
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 23:44 GMT
Bo Pedersen
was it the drivers or windows? #
I remember the biggest via problems I had were with windows ME
the rest worked fine as long as you installed everything in the right order
that was on 98
Mobo drivers
Graphics Drivers
Sound Drivers
Modem Drivers (plugging this in at the end) :)
ah them were the days
and they were stable and fast and very very cheap
of course stability depended on which cheap brand of motherboard you bought
some cheap ones were very bad, others were great.
pcchips being bad
lex being not too bad
its all just way too easy these days too :)
Posted Tuesday 12th August 2008 05:16 GMT
Hayden Clark
MVP3 anyone? #
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! If you installed the Via driver (on Win95, this was when Win98 was too new) the IDE driver couldn't cope with simultaneous transfers to multiple devices. Like when you install software from an IDE CD-ROM to your IDE hard drive. VC5 installer fortunately checksummed the installed files, and spotted it for me.
Oh, and the PCI bus was set up wrong, so simultaneously drawing to the screen and playing audio didn't work.
I restarted my machine so many times the CD-ROM drive died.
The PCI timing bug continued until quite recently.
Posted Tuesday 12th August 2008 05:16 GMT
vincent himpe
Yay ! #
No more crummy Usb 2.0 chipsets that dont support large packet throttling
No more turds of usb to ata bridges that corrupt data.
No more half arsed IEEE1394 ( fireWire) chipsets that are not OHCI compliant
No more half baked PCI implementations that don't correctly support bus mastering
No more crummy chipsets that need a ton of software 'drivers' to patch the bugs in them.
Via never wanted to pay for licences of USB , PCI or IEEE1394. They made cleanroom 99.99% compatible stuff.
Now it's just a matter of time before intel's Atom smashes that 'eden' cpu as well.
Posted Tuesday 12th August 2008 05:16 GMT
Anonymous Coward
Via sucks anyway #
Perhaps this is a good thing. So far, Via's own chips and chipsets seem to not have been given the proper attention. I personally won't touch Via based boards with a barge pole, they're nothing but trouble, both with Windows and Linux.
If this means Via is now going to put 100% effort into their own stuff, their mobos might actually suck less, which would be a good thing, cause real competition is always a good thing.
Perhaps Via will learn a lesson from AMD. The Geode LX800 chipset rocks and consumes less energy, no driver problems. Windows, Linux, BSD or VxWorks, they always work like a charm.
Posted Tuesday 12th August 2008 08:42 GMT
Luke McCarthy
Cheerio #
And thanks for all the cheap motherboard chipsets over the years...
Posted Tuesday 12th August 2008 12:28 GMT
Mark
tinfoil hat #
nVidia are happy to soldier on with their motherboard products cause they're planning to move into the CPU market, then they'll be in the same chipset providing position as AMD and Intel
This topic is closed for new posts.