Azza P4X4-ALH
Board Revision: 1.3D
BIOS Version: B14 (Nov 27, 2002)
Azza's board with VIA's P4X400 chipset is an optimal combination of price on the one hand and performance/features on the other. After a licensing dispute that went on for months, VIA has been able to sell P4 chipsets with Intel's blessing since April of this year; so nothing prevented it from taking part in this test.
The P4X4-ALH is a full-size ATX motherboard with six PCI slots, AGP, three DIMM sockets, network port, and a sound system. The board's layout leaves something to be desired, but it will still do the job for most users. All power supply connections were positioned directly alongside one another, which makes it easy to connect cables within the case.
The package includes the obligatory ribbon cables and a small adapter for using 4-channel Surround Sound. The BIOS provides rudimentary overclocking capacity (FSB manipulation).
The P4X4 is one of the most economical boards and should be available in stores at competitive prices. But this comes at the cost of merely average memory performance, which puts the board in the bottom third in almost all benchmarks.
