Conclusions

A dual PIII system is one hell of a setup. There's really nothing out there right now that can beat it. I'll certainly take dual PIIIs over the current single P4 solutions; tests have shown they give comparable performance. How well the dual AMD solutions based on the 760MP chipset will stack up, we'll just have to wait and see.

The real question is, how well does the VP6 compare to the other dual PIII models? Their feature sets are quite similar: The main differences between the VP6, the MSI 694D Pro, the EpoX D3VA and the Elitegroup D6VAA seem to be the absence or presence of onboard sound or an onboard ATA100/RAID controller. So does the most highly anticipated motherboard of the year live up to expectations? Beyond a shadow of a doubt. It gives you exactly what you want from a dual board: incredibly easy setup, great CPU performance, and unflagging stability. The VP6 is the best dual PIII board we are likely to see.