VIA's P4XB P4X266A Motherboard!

A few short months ago, if you were planning to build a high-end Pentium 4 system, an i850 based motherboard and expensive RDRAM was in your future.  VIA Technologies changed that though when they released their P4X266 chipset.  With the introduction of the P4X266 came the ability to use DDR SDRAM with the Pentium 4, which at the time was significantly cheaper than RDRAM yet offered similar performance.  Even though having a low-cost chipset on the market would help sales of the Pentium 4, Intel was none too happy about the P4X266.  Intel claimed VIA did not hold the necessary licenses to manufacture chipsets for the Pentium 4, and a lawsuit ensued.  With all of the litigation surrounding the P4X266, many OEMs shied away from building boards based on it.  A few boards did make it to market, but no where near what VIA would have liked to see.  A few months later, VIA improved the memory controller in the P4X266 and released an "A" version of the chipset.  Not happy with the turnout the first time around, VIA decided to take matters into their own hands and brought a whole line of motherboards using their unlicensed chipset to market.  The product we'll be looking at today, the P4XB, is VIA's basic P4X266A based motherboard. Let's dive right in and see what this puppy is made of...

Specifications / Features of VIA's P4XB The Nitty-Gritty...