Page 18: Via
VIA
About
Welcome to the newest company to sell motherboards. VIA doesn't make them, they just get other people to and they resell them. The whole reason why they do this is because Intel won't say they can have a P4 license. It would be very hard on VIA to make a chipset and not have most companies use it, so they design their own boards (they have to for the reference design anyway). They are the largest chipset manufacturer, and are a large and powerful company.
website
http://www.via.com.tw/en/index/index.jsp
http://www.viavpsd.com/
Performance:
As a reference design, they often aren't the fastest, but they are ahead of the majority of manufacturers. Since the only manufacturers that make the same chipset boards they do are lower quality ones, they are quite high in performance comparatively.
Rating: 7.5/10
Stability
VIA boards are stable, and since most of the time they are reference designs, they have to be stable. An unstable reference design would completely wipe out the business for that chipset.
Rating: 9/10
Overclocking
They might not be the best, or anywhere close to the top manufacturers, but they surprisingly do a good job, especially when you compare it to the likes of their competitors. They reach modest speeds, and have most options in the bios.
Rating: 6/10
Price
VIA boards are priced with the competition, and aren't the best or the worst. It depends on the model you get. Since VIA chipsets are cheap in the first place, quite a few people got these boards and didn't even know VIA made it, it was just cheap.
Price: 7.5/10
Features
VIA boards offer a large range of features. Its a bit surprising that each chipset has so many models, but RAID, onboard sound (a few types), NIC, and more are included. Its nice to see a manufacturer give you the options.
Rating: 8.5/10
History
VIA has no real history, as they are less then a year old.
Rating: NA
<b>
Support
</b>
VIA has their webpage full of drivers and bios updates, but no personal support to be seen. I may have missed it, but I checked everywhere.
Rating: 4/10
Products worth mentioning
They don't make enough boards to qualify for this. Especially since the boards are always with reject chipsets.
Rating: 0/10
Overall Rating: 6.1/10 VIA makes decent boards, there is no way to know how they hold up in the long run. Their boards are not the best, but a decent buy.
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