We compared VIA's P4X266 reference platform to our i850 reference board Asus P4T with PC800 RDRAM. The DDR-memory used in the P4X266-board was PC2100 DDR-SDRAM with a CAS latency of 2, which is still difficult to get. It is obvious that the performance of VIA reference board would be lower if we had used the commonly available CL 2.5 DDR-SDRAM DIMMs.

This test was conducted in our European lab, which turned out to be a clear disadvantage, as we were not given by far as much time to test this platform as our US colleagues. A VIA-representative delivered the board to us and stayed with us for a few hours only, in which we had to conclude the whole testing procedure. After our time was up the VIA-group took the board and left us. I strongly protest against this procedure. On that day, the sample board was tested by two other publications in Munich as well, which gives you a good idea how little time we actually had.

Benchmark Setup