VIA released a BETA driver patch today to help address some of the problems on AMD based VIA motherboards in WindowsXP. Though users are having mixed results with this patch, here is what our resident scripting guru, George Breese, has to say about the patch:
"This patch detects the 0305, 3099, 3102, and 3112 (KT133x, KT266x, VT8662, and KLE133) *only*. On these chipsets, it will patch register 55 in the Northbridge, which will supposedly switch off a Memory Write Queue timer.
In the KT133A datasheet, register 55 is "reserved". But - yikes! - in the KT266, the documented MWQ register is register 95, not 55. Register 55 contains unrelated DDR timing adjustments and could actually be dangerous to program. For this reason, I do not recommend installing this driver on the KT266x chipsets until VIA examines this issue. For now, use WPCREDIT and set bits 5, 6, and 7 to zero in register 95 instead."
News source: VIA Hardware
Download: VIA XP beta driver
This is BETA software!, please use caution when installing it on your system
"This patch detects the 0305, 3099, 3102, and 3112 (KT133x, KT266x, VT8662, and KLE133) *only*. On these chipsets, it will patch register 55 in the Northbridge, which will supposedly switch off a Memory Write Queue timer.
In the KT133A datasheet, register 55 is "reserved". But - yikes! - in the KT266, the documented MWQ register is register 95, not 55. Register 55 contains unrelated DDR timing adjustments and could actually be dangerous to program. For this reason, I do not recommend installing this driver on the KT266x chipsets until VIA examines this issue. For now, use WPCREDIT and set bits 5, 6, and 7 to zero in register 95 instead."
News source: VIA Hardware Download: VIA XP beta driver This is BETA software!, please use caution when installing it on your system
Fast Boot /Fast Resume Design
Customer research shows a frequently requested feature that users want from their PCs is fast system startup, whether from cold boot or when resuming from standby or hibernation. The Windows development team at Microsoft has taken bold steps in making fast startup PCs a reality with the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system.
The design goals for Windows XP on a typical consumer PC are:
- Boot to a useable state in a total of 30 seconds
- Resume from Hibernate (S4) in a total of 20 seconds
- Resume from Standby (S3) in a total of 5 seconds
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