Update: VIA DataCorruption bug!

[KuroNeko]

C'T Magazine Online today reports that many of the BIOS updates (most of them still in beta phase) that are circulating on the hardware websites, even those on the mainboard manufacturers websites themselves, do often NOT work! The bug is not always entirely fixed, even with new BIOS and the various patches to the settings.

They also did extensive testing and found something _very_ interesting: the error is limited to the 2nd IDE channel of the 686B Southbridge. They could never reproduce the errors on the 1st IDE channel! Yet with a master/slave combo in the 2nd channel (so copying from master to slave on the 2nd, not from master 1st to master 2nd as previously reported on many hardware sites) the errors & instabilities were rampant!

C'T also reported that copying from 1st 686B IDE channel to other controllers (onboard ATA or ATA RAID, or PCI card controllers)is completely without problems, again only when the 2nd IDE controller is used does data corruption occur. So you can also get the error when you copy from IDE2 to another controller, it's not just when you copy between the two 686B channels!

So the best solution is: don't use the 2nd IDE channel (at least until a proven fix is out.)

Neko

[Dr Mordrid]

Well....think about it.

The essence of the problems are bugs in the chipsets microcode. The software patches are just that, software.

Software uses resources and would also contribute to system loading. If a system is already full the extra softwares loading might make things worse rather than better.

A better fix is to use a chipset that doesn't NEED software patches running to correct for its failings.

Dr. Mordrid

[Jkun]

Unfortunately, BX chipsets are rather old and don't support even 133 MHz FSB.

The i815 is also plagued by limitations such as 512MB RAM. Not to mention it is slower than any VIA chipset since Intel crippled it so it wouldn't compete with RD-RAM chipsets

The Rambus chipsets that Intel produces also require patches or even have been recalled (the MHT debacle)

There simply are no perfect chipsets. We'll have to live with the glitches, as long as the computer industry keeps moving at this rapid pace.

Jkun

[wkulecz]

In the real world where applications must run and produce usable results, the benefits of 133fsb vs 100 seem dubious at best.

If it takes 100fsb to work reliably, that's what I'll use.

All my captures, outputs to tape etc. are problem free with BX chipset and so far so good with an AMD 750 chipset also running at 100MHz -- Athelon 700.

Is there a pattern here?

I don't care what some wrong headed benchmark says about "speed" I only care about how the applications I need to use actually run.

--wally.

[Jkun]

But not everyone uses the same apps that you do.

I have a BX board for capture, just because of the pickiness of capture boards. But for my MPEG encoding and 3d rendering, I need power.

So I have a choice: dual Intel 1 GHz, or the fastest Athlon. Both only run on VIA chipsets (unless you want to pay 4 times as much for an equally fast i840 RDRAM setup)

And the 133 MHz bus isn't the problem in the 686B. And it's not the major limitation of the BX either - on a BX, you can't find anything faster than a 850MHz over here, the rest is all 133 MHz FSB PIII's.

The VIA issue isn't a problem for me anymore, now that I know to avoid the second IDE channel. If I need more IDE, I'll plug in a Promise card.

Jkun

[AndrewDV]

Has anyone else had these results? Unless it is purely a memory addressing scheme issue, it seems really odd. If it is true, I guess you could put your CDRW and DVD drive on the 2nd channel.

[Jkun]

Andrew, this is about a bug that's been discovered a few weeks ago and has been talked about on every hardware site, not just here.

As far as using CDRW or DVD drives on IDE2 : DON'T!! C'T Magazine reported that it doesn't matter if it's a HD or another device; data copied from/to IDE2 is prone to corruption when the PCI bus is under load.

J-kun

[Dr Mordrid]

Obviously it's just recently discovered but not recent in nature. VIA's have been an issue for high system load apps and devices for some time, it's just that now the reasons are being documented.

Hopefully this will prompt VIA/Apollo to fix the CORE issue: their microcode is laden infested with bugs and design flaws.

Maybe when they're done they'll send some engineers to Creative so they can fix their product line as well.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 22 April 2001).]

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

As a VIA owner, I understand this is a bug. The 'oddity' was on the discovery of it being on the 2nd IDE channel.

I loaded up the latest BIOS for my IWill KK266-R. After some initial tests, I noticed there were several performance jumps (especially in the on-board RAID). So far, I have not seen any data corruption.

[Rob100]

AndrewDV,

I too have KK266R and am currently running the 0307 turbo BIOS. I have had quite a bit of trouble setting this system up with my Marvel G400.

I must say however that the audio sync using this board is so much better that with my Abit BF6 or BX133-RAID.

I have a couple of IBM 30GIG 7200 rpm IDE drives, but using both the VIA IDE controller (primary) or the AMI Raid controller I am getting lockups when capturing (normally after about 2 mins).

Any ideas? What's your set-up?

Update:

I flashed to the latest BIOS but still problems persisted :-( However I think I've found the problem... The on board sound... I disabled this and put my Santa Cruz in and seems almost perfect. Sync is perfect during playback of MJPEG's and I can capture at 480x576 (SVCD) using huffyuv with 44.1k stereo audio and get NO drops - not a single one ;-) I've been capture satellite for the last hour and not a single drop. I'm beginning to like this system after all ;-)



[This message has been edited by Rob100 (edited 22 April 2001).]

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

I bought the KK266-R and went through a series of ups and downs. The latest BIOS has made me quite happy.

The only lockups I had dealt with memory settings. Except for interleaving (set to 4 way), the current settings are all the default ones.

The previous RAID BIOS had some issues as well. After some initial tests, I did not use the RAID. It caused crashes and did not perform as advertised. With the updates (the BIOS update also includes a AMI update to 2.5), I thought that it would see more use. First, I loaded up the Win9x driver. The performance was way below average using Sandra. Then, I loaded up the Win2K driver under WinME and was truly amazed!

As far as sound, try out the latest drivers and make sure there is no IRQ sharing. The drivers on the installation CD are not very good (even the WDM ones). There is a link on the Iwill (http://www.iwill.net) site that takes you to the latest CMI8378 drivers. So far, it is pretty good. Overall, I am pleased enough to use that over a sound card. You do not get the 'ultimate' sound, but it saves on slots and is very simple to use.

OH! One very important item I had to do is to disable ACPI in WinME (or Win98). ACPI was causing my captures to be nothing but trash. I changed the driver to the standard 'Plug and Play BIOS' files. After that, it captures like a dream!

Another item to consider is to buy a fan for that Northbridge chipset. I bought a kit for about $15. It came with a few heat sinks, tape, glue, and a fan. The only item out of the kit you need is the fan. Since the KK266-R is designed to handle 4 system fans (currently using all 4 - CPU, 2 Case, 1 Chipset - it's like a wind tunnel in there), it took about 2 minutes to install. Just screwed it into the existing heat sink.

All in all, this motherboard is very good. IWill seems to be trying hard to keep the customers happy. It works MUCH better than initially thought.

[Rob100]

Hi AndrewDV,

>I bought the KK266-R and went through a >series of ups and downs.

Shelved mine for a couple of weeks due to all the problems I was having, but decided to give it another go now.

>The only lockups I had dealt with memory >settings. Except for interleaving (set to >4 way)

I have Crucial PC133 CAS2, timings set to normal. Do you have more than one dimm?

[RAID BIOS]

>Then, I loaded up the Win2K driver under >WinME and was truly amazed!

That's strange as performace seems to be crap (about 1/3 when compared with Win98) with Win2k. I'll have to play about I think.

Incidently I just installed Win2k on the IWill and despite what I've read elsewhere regarding the latest BIOS is seems stable enough. Wasn't able to install with boot HD on Raid for some reason. Maybe drivers on floppy that comes board don't work with new Raid BIOS. Anyway I just moved over to VIA controller and after Win2k was installed, used the drivers from the CD, move HD onto AMI controller and re-booted. Works fine.

In fact I have also managed to install the G200 MMS drivers and Vidtools and they work just great. I'm beginning to think that capturing with these is the best I've ever had it. YUY2 is there, and I can capture at full frame max quality using MJPEG without a single drop. Testing at the moment and so far 25 mins for Satellite and no drops again. Using Win98 and VT1.54 I could only do this using YUY2.

>As far as sound, try out the latest drivers >and make sure there is no IRQ sharing.

I deliberately have minimal stuff in this machine to avoid IRQ problems so that's not the issue.

I will try the on board audio again tomorrow night. Just downloaded latest Win98 and 2k drivers.

>to disable ACPI in WinME (or Win98). ACPI >was causing my captures to be nothing but >trash.

What capture card?

>Another item to consider is to buy a fan >for that Northbridge chipset. I bought a >kit for about $15.

Searched around on the UK's premiere O/Cing sites for one of these but kind find one. I'll ask in one of there forums.

Not sure if I really want another fan TBH as I already have a Delta (>7000 rpm) on the CPU and things are getting noisy here ;-)

>All in all, this motherboard is very good.

At first I was very disapointed, but things are looking much better now.

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

Here is my machine:

Dual boot: WinME (primary use) and Win2K (experimental setting)
AMD 1.1Ghz
IWill KK266-R
2-Corsair PC133 CAS3 DIMMs
1-20GB WD HDD (non-RAID)
1-20GB Maxtor HDD (non-RAID)
2-45GB IBM 75gxp (RAID0)
1-Panasonic 16x (single slot) DVD
1-Mitsu CDRW
Matrox Marvel G400-TV
Hauppage WinTV-PVR
Creative Dxr3

BIOS items:
-Using the latest BIOS (April Release)
-I do not use the USB or serial ports. They get disabled in BIOS.
-Turned all of the APM related settings off.
-4 way interleaving is turned on.
-AGP Aperture set to 128
-Everything has its own IRQ
-No overclocking

RAID0:
-Using the Win2K drivers under WinME. This does not work under Win98.
-The 2 IBM drives are on separate ports (not Master/Slave).
-Turned off SMART.

Capture and ACPI:
-Matrox card captures had loads of flashes when using ACPI.
-WinTV card captures had lines in it when using ACPI. *Note: using the bt878A Fusion this happened. When capturing using the KFir MPEG encoder, there were no lines.
-Turned off ACPI and everything was fine.

Other stuff:
-Disable Dxr3 when capturing. Only need when decoding MPEG.
-Using latest updates of WinME
-Capturing with AVI_IO + PIC MJPEG (highest quality setting)
-Fans plugged onto motherboard. The kit I used was called 'Chipset Cooler Bundle.' It was purchased from Microcenter (USA location). You really only need the fan.

I know I am leaving out a lot, but this should give you a general idea.

Hope some of this helps.


[This message has been edited by AndrewDV (edited 23 April 2001).]

[Rob100]

AndrewDV,

Thanks for all the info.

I have WinME here and think I will give it a go rather than 98. The only thing that stopped me using it before was the lack of DOS support. Looking at Matrox's site WinME is officially supported by VidTools, but it all works okay?

I've been messing before and with a single drive on the RAID IDE I was started to get drops after 30 minutes or so of capturing. I pulled another IBM 30 gig I have here from another machine and set up a 60 gig strip and haven't dropped a frame yet. First time I ran Matrox HD benchmark it reported 77.1MB/s !!! Only ;-) reports about 33MB/s now... This is Win98 and the RAID drivers from the CD. Do you have "write cache" and "DMA" enabled in the RAID BIOS? I do, just wondering if you do?

>Capture and ACPI:
>-Matrox card captures had loads of flashes >when using ACPI.

Now you say this I must admit I did notice a couple of flashes whilst watching something I captured yesterday in my experiments.

>Capturing with AVI_IO + PIC MJPEG (highest >quality setting)

Why not use Matrox's MJPEG?

>Hope some of this helps.

Big help, thanks again ;-)

[Rob100]

Andrew,

Just installed ME and using the Win2k AMI drivers from the IWILL CD I get about 88mb/s which appears to be awesome, but capturing is crap (stutters/bursts )and looking at the "performance tab" (right click on my computer) it says that my HD is running in "compatability" mode. I put the Win 9x drivers in and not only get about 44mb/s but capturing seems good - doing my first "long" test now.


[This message has been edited by Rob100 (edited 24 April 2001).]