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Some boards qualify through performance, others appeal through bundled features and yet others blind with innovation. The ASUS P4S533 probably falls into the first category, combined with a healthy shot of quality but it does not bundle very much, at least not in terms of add-on components. However, whatever you get is quality stuff, starting from the manual, which in typical ASUS fashion is one of the best in the entire genre. The same goes with the driver and utilities CD which, together with the offerings from Shuttle, is at the very top in the field.

At a street price of roughly $100, one doesn't expect much in terms of add-ons and one doesn't get them either. The USB bracket is a welcome addition, though.

Aside from drivers and documentation, the rest of the bundle is rather Spartan, at least in comparison to the exuberant extravaganza offered by MSI or Soyo. But then, not all that glitters is gold and sometimes, a down to earth package fulfilling the needs for functionality is worth more than all nicely wrapped up toys that, in the final analysis, nobody really uses. Suffice it to say that the only peripheral included is a dual-port USB-1.1 back bracket. This meager bundle is better than it appears at first glance, after all, the board features onboard LAN and 6-channel sound anyway. I am still somewhat curious about the ASUS audio front panel but then, there are a ton of third party solutions and passing on the savings to the end-users is not a bad idea either.

Layout

The P4S533 looks similar to the P4S333, very similar, indeed but there are some fundamental differences between the layout of both boards. Most importantly, the advanced communication riser (ACR) slot is gone but the board doesn't really need the ACR support since almost all functions usually associated with an ACR form factor are already supported by onboard devices. The exceptions are modem functionality and Home-PNA support that are missing but with six PCI slots, there is enough expandability to add hard or soft modems or network cards of any flavor in addition to the integrated LAN interface.

The general layout features three DIMM slots with the usual limitation of only two of them being usable for PC2700 operation, 6 PCI slots and one universal AGP slot. The two IDE interfaces and the floppy connector are on the far right in the upper half of the board and allow to move the ribbon cables away form the board as fast as possible and, thus, avoid any interference with airflow over the memory or CPU.

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