[geeks] Intel Atom MB - Initial Impressions

[Nadine Miller]

On Jun 11, 2008, at 11:41 AM, Mark wrote:

> On 11 Jun 2008, at 16:36, Nadine Miller wrote:
>
>> /me *shrugs*  Not every company puts out good stuff all the time.   
>> My dad's ASUS mobo we got him back in the late nineties was  
>> reliable, but it was a rev 1 board, and the VIA chipsets on it were  
>> crap.
>
> *Everyone* has problems with VIA chipsets, they suck period. After  
> my last VIA-based AthlonXP board died of mystery not soft-or-hard- 
> resetting problems, then my dad's identical board did the same (Both  
> ASUS A7V8Xs - based on VIA KT400), then a friend's VIA KT400-based  
> ABit board did the same I swore blind I'm NEVER running a VIA board  
> again, of any type. My bad history with VIA goes a-ways back to 1999  
> and transcends 4 major motherboard makers. I had a VIA Apollo based  
> PII/III Slot 1 board back then and the USB was atrocious on it. I  
> had an issue getting a Logitech webcam working on it, so I looked  
> online for answers and 1000s of people had the same issue with that  
> chipset.
>
> I'm afraid I don't care if VIA meet god and get the recipe for  
> eternal life, IMHO they would probably release that with a critical  
> bug in it too...

Yep.  Exact same issue, also on an A7V.  I don't remember what the  
ASUS boards I have here are in terms of chipsets.

> It's Intel, AMD/ATi or NVIDIA here.

I was leery of nVidia due to problems I saw with early ones, but those  
seem to have been sorted.  All the recent mobo's my dad had were  
nVidia, and they seemed fine.  This Gigabyte mobo has been a  
workhorse, and aside from the defective PSU power sag killing the on- 
board RAID, it's still fine.

>> Rev 1 boards and systems seem to be the most problematic across all  
>> manufacturing lines, IME.
>
> Trouble is with a Mac it's easy to avoid rev 1 stuff but with PC  
> parts it's a lottery, it depend son suppliers' stocks etc.

True.  Especially by mail order; RMA'ing things is a PITA when  
shipping is involved.

=Nadine=