Without P4X600 as a strong competitor for Intel’s E7205 and SiS’ 655 chipsets, VIA may loose its already not very strong positions on the Pentium 4-supporting platform market this year. Although P4X400 can show impressive performance in a lot of cases, the core-logic itself if slightly outdated and given that the competing solutions will be able to provide even more speed in applications that heavily load memory bandwidth, the P4X400 based mainboards will not be popular among end-users.

In order to attract attention of potential customers, VPSD launched an advanced P4PB 400 mainboard based on VIA P4X400 chipset. Here are the specifications of the P4PB Ultra:

• Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4 / Celeron processors with 400/533MHz FSB with 3.06GHz clock-speed and above;
• Can take advantage of the CPUs with the Hyper-Threading technology enabled, according to a VIA unofficial claim;
• VIA P4X400 core-logic with VIA VT8235 I/O controller;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC1600, PC2100, PC2700 or even DDR400 DDR-SDRAM memory;
• 6 PCI slots, 1 CNR slot and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 integrated controller;
• Promise ATA-33/66/100/133 RAID;
• 8 USB 2.0 ports;
• 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet adapter;
• Smart Media Panel with Smart Card, Memory Stick & Secure Digital Reader combination is bundled;
• AC’97 6-channel CM18738 audio solution from Cmedia with SPDIF support;
• FliteDeck - an extensive system management suite that enables features like overclocking, system monitoring and BIOS updates and comprises four utilities, MissionControl, JetStream, FlashPort, and SysProbe.
• ATX Form Factor.

No word on pricing and availability.