P3V4X now with fewer speeds?

Turns out that the newer P3V4Xs come with a Winbond PLL-IC which
has 16 FSBs — 66 (1/2), 75 (1/2), 83 (1/2), 100 (1/3), 103 (1/3), 105
(1/3), 110 (1/3), 112 (1/3), 115 (1/3), 120 (1/3), 124 (1/3), 124 (1/4), 133
(1/3), 133 (1/4), 140 (1/4), 150 (1/4).

Meanwhile, the older ICS PLL-IC has
32 FSBs — 66 (1/2), 68 (1/2), 75 (1/2), 80 (1/2), 83 (1/2), 85 (1/3), 90
(1/3), 95 (1/3), 100 (1/3), 103 (1/3), 105 (1/3), 109 (1/3), 112 (1/3), 114
(1/3), 115 (1/3), 118 (1/3), 120 (1/3), 124 (1/4), 126 (1/4), 129 (1/4), 135
(1/4), 133 (1/4), 138 (1/4), 140 (1/4), 141 (1/4), 143 (1/4), 145 (1/4), 147
(1/4), 150 (1/4), 154 (1/4), 160 (1/4), 166 (1/4).

I don’t know why they changed it, but quite frankly, I feel ripped off by
this new revision, since I was expecting to get ALL those clock speeds.

Technically it’s not false advertising, but it’s VERY misleading
because all the reviewer sites have the OLDER one with the ICS clock chips!
I don’t want anyone else to fall into the same pit as I did, so spread this
around.

The way to distinguish the newer one from the older one is by the chip closest to the DIMM sockets. If
it’s a Winbond chip (W83195R-08), it has the PLL-IC with fewer FSB options. If it’s an ICS chip (ICS 9250BF-18), it will
have the extra FSB speeds. The newer one comes shipped with the 1005 BIOS
preloaded (which incidentally has a remark about something like this (ie:
different PLL-IC detection method)).

Update 7/28/00: Just poking through my box the other day and realized that there’s
probably an easier way to distinguish the boards with fewer speed
settings.

The boards with different PLL-ICs will have a sticker over the
silkscreened settings on the board for setting the DIP switches. It’s
located below the PCI slot 1, the one closest to the AGP slot. I’ve asked
a few people who have the board with fewer settings and they had the same
yellow sticker. This MAY change if Asus decides to completely move over
to these Winbond chips.

By now, I expect there’s quite a few more places which only have P3V4Xs
with Winbond ones. To be fair, I should also point out that these newer
boards seem to have less glitches (like the SBLive noise glitch) than
older ones, but I still have problems with my Pinnacle Studio DC10+ which
I didn’t have on my Abit BX6r2. This may be a VIA chipset problem, or
VIA’s inability to deal with PCI IRQ sharing as well as Intel BX.

Email Alexander