The P4X266, despite its age, is still certainly a viable product. However, VIA's still unresolved legal entanglement with Intel effectively means that many motherboard manufacturers, especially larger ones such as AOpen, ASUS, and MSI will not touch the chipset with a 10-foot pole, leaving only VIA's own Platform Solutions Division and several smaller manufacturers as the producers of P4X266-based motherboards. This limits the choice for consumers. On the other hand, the SiS 645 is the Godsend manufacturers are looking for to roll out DDR solutions for the Pentium 4. Official support for DDR333 SDRAM is an added perk which may or may not give up to a 7% performance increase depending on the application. Its DDR266 performance is generally competitive, despite its higher memory latency. With better performance than the P4X266, the 645 looks set to dominate the Pentium 4 DDR scene save one factor : Intel's DDR chipset. The DDR266-equipped i845 shows very strong performance, coming in a close second to the DDR333-equipped 645. The same i82801BA ICH2 used since the i815 chipset is still going strong (save for ATA-133 support), turning disk performance numbers anywhere from 6% to a whooping 30% faster than both the 645 and P4X266. This is definitely an area in which SiS and VIA need to catch up on, although users utilizing non-integrated drive controllers won't see this issue. Considering the excellent reliability of the very first SDRAM-based i845 motherboards, accompanied by Taiwanese manufacturers' claim that the DDR-based i845 will be the next BX chipset, the i845 could displace the 645 as the chipset of choice, despite the 645's lower cost and higher performance. Ultimately, the SiS 645 in DDR333 mode is the top dog in this comparison. Although as of yet unapproved by JEDEC, DDR333 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM isn't too difficult to find nowadays, with manufacturers such as Kingmax producing CAS 2 modules. The 645 reference motherboard performed flawlessly even under heavy use, which indicates that reliability should not be an issue with 645-based products. However, VIA is poised to release the P4X333 in the near future. Whether or not the 645 can fend it off remains to be seen, but for now, the SiS 645 remains the top choice for DDR Pentium 4 performance.
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