VIA P4XB -RA 266A mainboard

Introduction

Good day folks, we got more motherboard mania going around here at Technoyard. Following the success of the P4X-266 chipset, VIA recently announced their newest addition; the P4X-266A chip.

Here are some of the key highlights of the P4X-266A chipset, taken from the VIA white papers;

• Enhanced Processor Bus

The VIA Apollo P4X266A features an enhanced processor bus interface that more efficiently takes advantage of the quad pumped bus of the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor. Now, up to 12 instructions can be queued in the processor bus interface, allowing the high speed 400MHz bus of current and Pentium® 4 processors to run at optimal efficiency.

• Performance Driven Memory Controller

Using the highly efficient memory controller of the renowned VIA Apollo KT266A, the VIA Apollo P4X266A offers exceptionally high memory performance. This is accomplished through improved timings and deepened queues. Supporting up to 4GB of DDR200 or DDR266 memory, the VIA Apollo P4X266A provides lightning fast access to system memory.

• High-Speed V-Link Hub Architecture

The VIA Apollo P4X266A takes advantage of VIA’s high performance V-Link Hub Architecture, which provides a dedicated 266MB/s bus between the North and South Bridge. Less advanced chipsets use the 132MB/s PCI bus as a link, which must be shared with all PCI peripherals. V-Link greatly improves data transfer rates when high-speed interconnect technologies such as USB2.0, IEEE1394, and ATA/133 are implemented in a single system.

P4X-266A Chipset

The VIA P4X-266 wasn’t what we would call a performance chipset, however it provided very decent and stable performance which made it a highly sort after chip by many manufactures. So does the P4X-266A have anything more to offer us in terms of performance? Let’s find out. After all VIA introduced this as one of their high-performance chipsets. If you read the above specs, the VIA P4X-266A boasts an improved memory controller and faster bus speeds. Lets see if all this is well justified by taking a look at their P4XB -RA mainboard.

Specifications