VIA 4-in-1 Drivers necessary?

[Boo Radley]

I've had cause to drag out the 'ol CD that came with the PC I bought a couple of years ago and noticed a program(?) relating to VIA 4-in-1 drivers.

The chipset on my m/board (Aopen AX63) is VIA Apollo Pro Plus.

For the past hour I've been searching the 'net for info relating to it, and now am wondering if someone might be able to put it's description into plain English for me.

What exactly does it do? Is it really necesary? How do I know if it's installed or not (I don't recall ever installing it, but I've done several spring clean M$ reinstalls)?

None of the sites I visited put VIA drivers into perspective, nor did they say whether it is compulsory to install.

Whether system specs or not mak a diffrence, I'll include them anyway:

Cel 500 (don't laugh http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif), 384MB RAM, 10.2GB HDD, CD Burner, S/C, S3 V/C, Win 98SE...

Any assistance you could offer would be most appreciated...

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Boo!®

[Sylvander]

Hello Boo

Acouple of years back I was trying to fix hardware problems with my son's Motherboard and was in contact with the Motherboard Manufacturer's Technical helpline [the guy there was really helpful and spent quite a lot of time with me on the phone].

After talking me through various hardware tests he said I needed The "Via 4-in-one drivers, which he sent to me on a floppy and I installed.
I can't remember all the details, [it was very technical stuff], but it was all about the Motherboard, the North Bridge, South Bridge and it permitted the sharing of IRQ's.

By the way, the motherboard had been broken by the shop who were supposed to move all the hardware into a larger case.
The symptom was that the serial ports would not work so the serial mouse would not work [although a PS2 mouse did] and neither would the modem.
We were looking for shortage/conflict of resources so were removing all unnecessary hardware which, of course, did no good.

Neither did a re-boot and re-install which is where the re-install of the 4-in-one drivers became necessary.

[pentachris]

Basically, the BIOS acts as a sort of "generic driver" for the mainboard's chipset. Just like you won't get optimum performance out of your video card in standard VGA mode, you won't get all the features possible from your mainboard without drivers that are specific to it.

Why don't you just flash the BIOS, then? The BIOS is what makes a PC a PC and not a Mac, for instance. There are some very strict protocols that it must be in conformance with in order to load and run all the various operating systems made for PC's. It must do certain things, and the less it does in addition to that the less chance there is for compatability issues.

Chipset drivers are most often necessary or helpful when peripherals are attached that communicate with the other components in a unique or "strenuous" way - UDMA hard drives, 4x AGP cards, CDRW's.

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Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

[This message has been edited by pentachris (edited 05-14-2002).]

[Rick]

The Via 4 in 1 driver set is exactly what the name implies
4 drives inside of one executable install program
they are
Via CPU to AGP, PCI, and ISA bridge Controller
Via Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
Via Power Management controller
Via Tech PCI to USB Host Controller


Installing these drivers can and will enhance the performance of your system.
In the case of the AGP driver it is required to get true AGP 4 performance

[Boo Radley]

Thanks for that folks.

Should it the VIA drivers be installed at "any old time", or wait until I next do a re-format spring clean?

BTW: My rule of thumb with BIOS is if it ain't broke....

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Boo!®

[This message has been edited by Boo Radley (edited 05-14-2002).]

[Rick]

If you already have the 4in1 installed and you are not experiencing any problems
Then Like your Bios updates.
If It’s not broke don’t fix it.

If you haven’t installed them yet and you want to tweak a little more performance
You may want to install them..

One Note .
Before installing an updates or new version of the 4in1 drivers.
Use the install programs Uninstall option.
Then reboot and reinstall them.

[Boo Radley]

Thanks again. That makes it all perfectly clear.

I haven't previously installed them, so I'll give it a shot.

Although... extra performance from a Celery 500... - I gotta see this http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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Boo!®

[integral]

Via (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2) Of course you have visted VIAs web page? Some people claim that they cannot live without the latest set of via 4 in 1 drivers for thier system. Others stay away from via boards!

[This message has been edited by integral (edited 05-23-2002).]