VIA has shipped its P4X266A chipset, a minor upgrade to its controversial P4X266 part for the Pentium 4. And we're sure Intel will be no more happy with this one than the other.

The 'A' offers increased memory throughput with what VIA claims is the world's fastest DDR memory controller. It also hooks into VIA's latest south-bridge chip, the VT8233A, which adds Ultra ATA/133 support to the line.

The P4X266A supports both Socket 423 and Socket 478 P4s with 400MHz frontside buses. The part is fabbed at 0.22 micron and costs $25 when bought in bulk. It is compatible with motherboards designed for the P4X266 or the graphics-integrated P4M266.

And VIA wins this week's Register Marketing Nonsense Award, for "Performance Driven Design", which is a fancy way of saying 'we made it go faster'... ®