<%BANNER[top_768x90]%>

<%BANNER[banner_468x60_h]%>

P4MA Pro from VIA: Clear the Way for the Newcomers

by Anton Shilov
08/23/2002 | 09:38 AM

VIA has launched its new mainboard called P4MA Pro based on their old and unlucky P4M266 chipset with integrated SavagePro8 graphics core. Despite of being launched almost a year ago, this logic has not managed to become widely spread mostly because VIA still has not licensed Pentium 4 system bus. The particular product is aimed on systems integrators and various OEMs and was introduced in order to clear out the inventory stocks from antiquated chips and also clear the way for the new P4M333 chipset with integrated SavageXP (Zoetrope) graphics core.

Technical specifications of the novelty are not interesting at all since this mainboard looks today as a blast from the past and resembles P4MA but with USB 2.0 support:

Supports Socket 478 Pentium 4 / Celeron processors with 400MHz FSB;
VIA P4M266 North Bridge accompanied by VT8235 I/O Controller;
2 DIMM slots for up to 2GB of PC1600 (DDR200) or PC2100 (DDR266) DDR SDRAM memory;
3 PCI , 1 AGP 4x and 1 CNR slot;
2-channel ATA-133 integrated controller;
Up to 6 USB 2.0 ports;
10/100Mbit/s Ethernet adapter from Realtek;
VIA VT1616 6-channel audio solution;
Supports some performance adjustment features, such as CPU and memory overclocking and tuning;
MicroATX Form Factor.

Although this mainboard is primary intended for system integrators, we doubt it will be popular even there not talking about retail market. Firstly because Intel advises its partners not to use VPSD products for Pentium 4 platform, secondly because both SiS and Intel have more advanced solutions to offer for low-end platforms, for instance, SiS650 integrated chipset as well as Intel`s 845GL and 845GV core-logic devices. Finally, just a number of weeks from now, VIA will unveil their P4M333 with SavageXP graphics core and 533MHz system bus support.

<%BANNER[banner_468x60_f]%>