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Our
first impression of the VIA P4PB Ultra, when the box showed
up on the testing bench, was that it screamed (literally)
that it was here to play. From the no-nonsense black
box with a guy yelling (at what we have yet to find out) to
the impressive bundle within, it was clear that VIA was out
to stake their own claim on the Pentium 4 Enthusiast
Motherboard playing field. Legally, it has been a
mostly uphill battle for VIA, who claims that the rights to
the P4's system bus architecture, were acquired when they
bought out S3 Graphics. Intel, which designs and
manufactures chipsets for the majority share of P4 boards
sold, would like nothing better than to keep VIA out of
their backyard. However, competition always brings out
the best in just about anything, and having other capable
motherboard chipsets to compete with Intel solutions, should
only inspire Intel to press on in an effort to stay ahead of
VIA, feature-set and performance wise. One only needs
to look at ATI vs nVidia, or the latter vs. 3dfx, to see
what happens when a company rests on its laurels for too
long without a real push to innovate.
The P4PB
Ultra we received was based on the latest chipset from VIA
for the P4, the P4X400. Rather than step cautiously,
VIA has hit the ground running, coming up with a chipset
that supports some of the latest features that can be found
these days, 8xAGP, ATA133, USB 2.0, and official
DDR400 support. To complement this fully featured
board, VIA included an equally as impressive bundle.
So, they've developed the chipset, they built the board
around it, and they have added a great bundle. The question
is, will this be enough to sway over customers from the
Intel chipset camp?
Let's get a look at what this board is all about.
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Specifications of the VIA P4PB Ultra Motherboard |
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A
board worth screaming about |
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Below
are the items that were included with the sample we
received for review:
VIA
P4PB Ultra Motherboard
Media Card Breakout box
with attachment cables
Two 80-pin ROUND IDE ribbon cables
One 3.5" ROUND floppy drive cable
A bracket with 4 extra USB 2.0 ports
A bracket with S/PDIF output
Power adapter cable
I/O shield
User's Manual
Software & Drivers CD
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Processor Support:
Supports Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron
Socket478 processors with 400/533 MHz FSB
Chipset
VIA P4X400:
VIA VT8754 NorthBridge
VIA VT8235 SouthBridge
Memory
Three 184-pin DIMM sockets (unbuffered Non-ECC)
Supports 3 DDR200/266/333 DIMMs (3GB Maximum)
Also has official support for DDR400
Expansion Slots
Six 32-bit PCI Bus Master Slots
One 1.5V AGP Slot (AGP 8x/4x)
One CNR Riser Slot
External
I/O Connections
Two PS/2 ports (keyboard &
mouse)
Two Serial ports
One Parallel port
Three Audio jacks (line-in, mic-in, line-out)
One Game Port
Two USB 2.0 ports
One RJ-45 LAN connector
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Internal I/O
Connections
One Floppy Disk Drive Connector
Two IDE Connectors (UltraDMA133/100/66 Support)
Four USB 2.0 headers for eight additional ports
Two CD-IN headers
One IrDA header
RAID/IDE Controllers
Promise 20276 RAID controller supporting RAID
0,1
Two ATA133 Connectors
Network Features
10/100 Ethernet MAC integrated into the
VT8235 SouthBridge + VT6103 PHY
Audio Features
C-Media CM18738 6-channel audio chip
BIOS
Award BIOS
Supports STR, ACPI, WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0
2/4Mbit Flash Memory
CPU Temperature and Voltage Monitoring
Form Factor
ATX form factor (4 layers)
Size: 30.5cm x 24.5cm
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VIA Apollo P4X400 Chipset
High Performance DDR400 Chipset Platform
For The Pentium 4 Processor
The VIA Apollo P4X400
chipset is based on the company's idea of "Total System
Performance", where all bottlenecks are supposed to be
addressed and alleviated, in one way or another, to allow
balanced operation. This is achieved by bringing
together all of the latest innovations, fusing the
bandwidth of DDR400 memory with Pentium 4 processors, and
supporting 8xAGP, ATA133, USB 2.0, as well as VIA's "8x
V-Link" chip interconnect. On previous chipsets,
only a few of these areas may have been addressed.
The idea that a system is only as good as it's weakest
link applies here. VIA has, with the advent of the
P4X400, created a chipset with no apparent weaknesses
using these key technologies:
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DDR200/266/333/400
Support: With support for DDR400 modules, the VIA
P4X400 can reach a peak bandwidth of 3.2GB/s.
-
400/533MHz Processor Bus Settings
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AGP
8x:
-
ATA133 IDE Interface
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USB
2.0
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8X
V-Link: The 8x
V-Link Chip interconnect between the North and South
Bridges offers 533MB/s of memory bandwidth
Let's
take a peek at the board
