VIA Apollo Pro 133A Motherboard Roundup - July 2000

The Roundup

The P3V4X, if you recall from our original roundup, had performance issues when paired up with the latest GART drivers. The issues were so bad in fact that we were forced to strip the board of its otherwise deserving Editor's Choice award. After a bit of discussion back and forth with ASUS and finally after figuring out that the problem was due to VIA's GART drivers, the P3V4X was finally given the Editor's Choice award since the latest VIA drivers improved performance considerably to the point where it moved back up to the top of the performance charts.

With the P3V4X from ASUS coming in as the winner from 5 months ago, we added 9 other boards in order to make this roundup complete. Because of the P3V4X's presence, we omitted the ASUS CUV4X which is pretty much identical to the P3V4X in terms of performance and stability, the only differences being that it is a Socket-370 solution and it takes advantage of the VIA 686A South Bridge whereas the P3V4X uses the dated 596B South Bridge.

Running alongside the ASUS P3V4X were the following contenders: the AOpen AX34 Pro, AOpen AX64 Pro, Azza 694TX, Gainward 6VBA-133A, Microstar 694D Pro, Microstar MS-6309, QDI Advance 10A, Soyo SY-6VCA, and the Soyo SY-7VCA.