The P4X400 is ready to buy....

[Vette73]

Go to Pricewatch.com and type in P4X400. The Soltek SL-85ERV comes up at $101 plus shipping.

Here is a link to the board, It is a cool white color !!


Heres a Paste from their page...

?? VIA P4X400 + VT8235 chipset
?? FSB 533/400 MHz
?? Supports DDR 333/266 SDRAM
?? Supports AGP 8X/4X
?? Supports Ultra ATA 133/100/66
?? BIOS FSB Setting
?? 6-Channel AC'97 Audio
?? H/W Monitor
?? BIOS FSB & Vcore Setting
?? BIOS AGP & DIMM Voltage Setting
?? Supports six USB 2.0/1.1ports
?? Integrated LAN function (SL-85ERV-L only)
?? STR (Suspend to RAM)
?? SCR (Smart Card Reader) Interface

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Cool color - but I'd like to see it actually run DDR400 before I buy it.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: DevilsAdvocate
Cool color - but I'd like to see it actually run DDR400 before I buy it.

I like to see some REAL DDR400 Maybe some DDR333 Crucial can clock to DDR400

But I am waiting to see what the benchmarks show a Retail board can do.

But I know some people have been asking about this chipset, and yes it does have the NEW southbridge 8235.

 

[VBboy]

Tom's Hardware said they had lots of problems with that chipset...

 

[AZGamer]

Originally posted by: VBboy
Tom's Hardware said they had lots of problems with that chipset...

Tom's says alot of crap. I need some proof that there are problems.

 

[WetWilly]

Tom's says alot of crap. I need some proof that there are problems.

How about Anand's word? From Anand's SiS 648 Review:

There were only two platforms in this comparison that would work with DDR400: the SiS 648 and VIA?s P4X400. VIA?s P4X400 board did not run DDR400 as seamlessly as the SiS 648 reference board and was not able to produce scores in some tests; in other situations it merely crashed randomly

Several other sites are also having problems running the P4X400 at DDR400. BTW, take a good look at those Soltek specs, specifically "Supports DDR 333/266 SDRAM." No mention of DDR400. Admittedly there isn't an official DDR400 spec, but then again you can't complain if the Soltek board doesn't run DDR400.

It's also significant that Shuttle, one of VIA's extremely few P4 chipset supporters is essentially the first launch partner for SiS' 648. FYI, the Shuttle 648 board is pretty nice - southbridge ATA/133, 6 USB 2.0 ports, 3 FireWire ports, 6-channel audio; onboard Highpoint ATA/133 RAID, two SerialATA ports. To make a comparable VIA board, I doubt that VIA can price the three P4X400/VT8235/VT6306 chips less than SiS' two 648/963 chips - especially considering that SiS fabs their own chips and VIA can't.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: WetWilly
Tom's says alot of crap. I need some proof that there are problems.

How about Anand's word? From Anand's SiS 648 Review:

There were only two platforms in this comparison that would work with DDR400: the SiS 648 and VIA?s P4X400. VIA?s P4X400 board did not run DDR400 as seamlessly as the SiS 648 reference board and was not able to produce scores in some tests; in other situations it merely crashed randomly

Several other sites are also having problems running the P4X400 at DDR400. BTW, take a good look at those Soltek specs, specifically "Supports DDR 333/266 SDRAM." No mention of DDR400. Admittedly there isn't an official DDR400 spec, but then again you can't complain if the Soltek board doesn't run DDR400.

It's also significant that Shuttle, one of VIA's extremely few P4 chipset supporters is essentially the first launch partner for SiS' 648. FYI, the Shuttle 648 board is pretty nice - southbridge ATA/133, 6 USB 2.0 ports, 3 FireWire ports, 6-channel audio; onboard Highpoint ATA/133 RAID, two SerialATA ports. To make a comparable VIA board, I doubt that VIA can price the three P4X400/VT8235/VT6306 chips less than SiS' two 648/963 chips - especially considering that SiS fabs their own chips and VIA can't.

As WetWilly stated above, there have been numerous reports around the web regarding P4X400 issues (specifically related to DDR400 operation). I talked with Anand about the problems I was having getting DDR400 to run well on the VIA P4PB400 (the same P4X400 board Tomshardware had issues with), and we basically agreed that the difficulties likely had to be isolated to the board itself. In addition, I was unable to successfully complete SYSMark 2002, it would simply crash every time (hence the reason you don't see any SM2002 scores in the review btw). I'll be doing a review of several final production DDR400 boards based on the 648 and P4X400 chipsets this week, you'll know more then.

To clarify one point; yes it's true that DDR400 isn't an official, JEDEC-sanctioned spec. Neither the VIA P4X400 nor SiS 648 chipsets "officially" support DDR400 memory though, so it?s no surprise that the 648 and P4X400 don?t gain much from using DDR400 (in fact, in the P4X400?s case, usually gaining less perf. than with DDR333, which is odd). We're hoping VIA will resolve everything quickly, we'd like to make sure our board wasn't just bad.

Ah, gotta save some of this for the review!

 

[WetWilly]

we basically agreed that the difficulties likely had to be isolated to the board itself

This is even more interesting - VIA is passing aroung the same board to all of the review sites? If this were the reference board I might understand that, but I was under the impression that the VIA P4PB400 is a VPSD retail/OEM board. If so, why isn't there more than one board to go around and at that, you'd think the one board they're passing around would at least be stable at DDR400 speeds. Which leads to ...

in fact, in the P4X400?s case, usually gaining less perf. than with DDR333, which is odd

It may not be that odd. If the DDR400 support isn't quite there yet and they need DDR400 to at least work partially, the quickest fix would be to make the DDR400 BIOS timings conservative enough to work. Not accusing VIA of doing this, but it's obviously not unheard of for companies to do this sort of thing.

Ah, gotta save some of this for the review!

Bring it on

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Why would you even consider the Via if there is already problems with the board? That makes absolutely no sense.

Right now, it looks like a 2 horse race between Intel and SiS. I think I'm going to go SiS at the end of the day, unless someone out there wants to give me an insanely good deal on a 845G.

 

[Vette73]

The VIA was a test board, not a real final product from what I have seen.

Now if someone finds a Retail review I would like to see that.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

OK... but the question remains...

Why would Via ship defective test boards to their testers? Usually test boards are much more solid than that. I mean - the board is called the P4X400 - featuring *WOW* support for DDR400 *WOW*

Would you ship a test board where the main feature was broken? That makes no sense. If you are expecting the problems to be fixed in the retail board, you are setting yourself up for a horrible disappointment.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: WetWilly
we basically agreed that the difficulties likely had to be isolated to the board itself

This is even more interesting - VIA is passing aroung the same board to all of the review sites? If this were the reference board I might understand that, but I was under the impression that the VIA P4PB400 is a VPSD retail/OEM board. If so, why isn't there more than one board to go around and at that, you'd think the one board they're passing around would at least be stable at DDR400 speeds.

No, I didn't mean Tomshardware literally had the same board we did, I meant to say that they had one of the many P4PB 400 boards in the channel. Yeah, my statement was a little confusing.

 

[WetWilly]

Marlin1975,

The VIA was a test board, not a real final product from what I have seen.

Not true. The P4PB 400 is the VIA retail/OEM board, not a reference board. Here is the VIA P4PB 400 Mainboard spec page at VIA's site. Compare the board pic at VIA's site with the picture of the VIA P4PB400 at Tom's Hardware - the board they couldn't get to run at DDR400. It's the same board, even though Tom's review refers to it as a reference board.

Evan,

I meant to say that they had one of the many P4PB 400 boards in the channel

Hmmm ... so they shipped it with broken DDR400 support. It's beginning to look like VIA just renamed the P4X333 to P4X400, backed off the DDR400 timings, and isn't mentioning DDR400 a whole lot in conjunction with the P4PB400. It also looks like there's no DDR400 fix out either since the VPSD board has shown up in the channel and the only publicly available P4PB400 BIOS is v1.00.00. IMHO it looks like a poorly executed shot at deflecting attention away from the SiS 648.

BTW, Evan, one suggestion for the system board reviews - could you list in the "The Test" section of the review the BIOS rev your test boards are using? Thanks.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Evan Lieb

Originally posted by: WetWilly
we basically agreed that the difficulties likely had to be isolated to the board itself

This is even more interesting - VIA is passing aroung the same board to all of the review sites? If this were the reference board I might understand that, but I was under the impression that the VIA P4PB400 is a VPSD retail/OEM board. If so, why isn't there more than one board to go around and at that, you'd think the one board they're passing around would at least be stable at DDR400 speeds.

No, I didn't mean Tomshardware literally had the same board we did, I meant to say that they had one of the many P4PB 400 boards in the channel. Yeah, my statement was a little confusing.

Do you have a time frame of when you will test another P4X400? Like from Shuttle, etc...?

Thanks

 

[First]

WetWilly, the only real difference between the P4X333 and P4X400 is that the latter has functional AGP 8X support. DDR400 simply runs poorly on the P4PB 400 we tested (and apparently THG's board too). Although P4X400 DDR333 performance/reliability/etc. wasn't that bad.

And yeah, it's not a problem, of course I'll list the BIOS rev I'm using for each board.

Marlin1975, besides the VIA P4PB 400 (P4X400) board in our SiS648 review, I will be testing a couple other retail P4X400 boards. Hopefully I'll have a review of these retail P4X400 boards this week, along with a couple retail SiS648 boards.

 

[RayEarth]

is there going to be a review of a soyo dragon ultra using the p4x400?

 

[First]

Originally posted by: RayEarth
is there going to be a review of a soyo dragon ultra using the p4x400?

Yes.