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 Introduction.Recent years have seen Taiwanese chipset manufacturer VIA produce chipsets for both Intel and AMD based PCs. These have ranged from the Super Socket 7 MVP3, through to the well respected Socket 370 Apollo Pro133A and the superb Socket A KT133A and KT266A chipsets. In essence VIA has offered a chipset for almost every mainstream x86 processor platform which has appeared in the past three years. Late 2000 saw the introduction of the Pentium 4 processor from Intel. Initially the only chipset support for the P4 was in the form of the Rambus RDRAM compatible i850. As has been apparent since the flop of the i820 chipset in 1999/2000, Rambus RDRAM has not been a major success in the mainstream PC market due to its high price tag. As a result of the Rambus RDRAM association, initial sales of Pentium 4 based systems were not as brisk as Intel would have liked. In order for the Pentium 4 to gain acceptance Intel needed chipsets based upon PC-133 SDRAM and DDR SDRAM rather than pricey RDRAM for the mainstream PC market. As a result Intel granted licences to produce Pentium 4 compatible chipsets to companies such as ALi and SiS, along with producing the PC-133 and DDR SDRAM compatible i845 series. During this time VIA was also working on a Pentium 4 chipset. Due to the time scales associated with designing a motherboard chipset it is no surprise that VIA started development long before any licences were granted. As a result it was able to produce the P4X266 in readiness for an autumn 2001 launch. The main problem with the P4X266 has been the fact that VIA has entered a long and bitter legal battle with Intel concerning the right to produce it. Essentially VIA argues that it has the right to produce a Pentium 4 chipset via patents and licence rights which it aquired when it purchased S3's graphics division SonicBlue in 2000. Intel has responded that this licence was only granted to S3 and not VIA, hence the latter has no right to produce Pentium 4 chipsets. Both companies appear to be sticking to their positions (at time of publishing) and that the decision regarding the legality of VIA’s position (or Intel’s according to standpoint) is now firmly in the hands of lawyers. With all the legal shenanigans surrounding the P4X266 chipset it is not surprising that the vast majority of motherboard manufacturers are not willing to be associated with it. To date it appears that only a handful of manufacturers have put their names to P4X266 boards. As a result that has meant that VIA has had to enter the motherboard market as a company who will brand motherboards from manufacturers who do not wish to upset Intel. What we have here for review is a board based upon the P4X266 and overall it is a somewhat interesting solution to the problem of bring much needed memory bandwidth to the Pentium 4 after the PC-133 compatible i845 without the price penalty of Rambus RDRAM needed by the i850. To find out what we though of our P4X266 reference board, read on... VIA KT266.The VIA P4X266 is VIA's first chipset for the Pentium 4. Like the KT266, the KT266A features support for 133 MHz Front Side Bus operation (266 DDR), 3 GB of PC-2100 SDRAM and AGP 4X.
The South Bridge controller is the VIA VT82C686B chip which features support for U/DMA 100 Hard Drive support and also support for up to 4 USB devices to
be attached. The 686B also provides support for an AC97 audio codec, a feature which is becoming increasingly popular with many new motherboard designs.
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