Conclusion
VIA has finally done it! If you take some time to analyze the benchmark results more closely, you will notice that the VIA chipset is only slightly behind the fastest RAM/chipset combination available out there. Dual-channel PC1066 RDRAM is pretty powerful and provides an awesome 4.2 GB/s peak bandwidth. In contrast, the 2.7 GB/s of the P4X333 looks pretty weak. Yet, the chipset is still able to keep apace!
Two important features could not be included in this article. The first is the ATA/133 interface, which might enable improved performance. Unfortunately, there is no drive available that can make use of the available interface bandwidth. Although Maxtor is already shipping the corresponding drives, they do not make any difference in performance for now.
It's pretty much the same with the AGP 8x port - even though the P4X333 claims to be ready for this, it's impossible to get any graphics card to verify it. So the VIA chipset owes us some more answers as soon as AGP 8x becomes hot.
Finally, we can attest to the fact that the prototype motherboard was trouble-free and stable during testing. It offers excellent performance and sophisticated features, making it one of the best investments you can make at the moment, since the Pentium 4 as it is now should still be available for many months to come (at increased clock speeds, of course). Motherboard manufacturers should be able to ship P4X333-based motherboards in large quantities as well, seeing as they do not have to change their existing motherboard designs from P4X266A.
