Introduction

In all my experience with chipsets from Taiwanese vendor VIA Technologies, I had yet to be impressed by their products. My first taste was the VIA 580VPX for the Pentium MMX, and this was horrendously underpowered compared to the competing solution from Intel, the i430TX. Then came the VIA MVP3...this proved to be a good match for the Super Socket 7 CPUs from AMD, but still lacked the stability and especially the performance that the Intel i440BX provided. The Apollo Pro 133A was next, which created havoc on my system and refused to run in AGP 4x mode. So when I was offered the chance to test a board based on the Apollo Pro 266, I was a little hesitant, but decided to give VIA another chance. Have they improved on previous products? let's find out!