 |
AOpen AX4SPE Max i865PE Motherboard Review
|
|---|
| Wed May 21, 2003 | 3:53A| PermaLink |
|
|
For Intel anyway, 2002 was the year of the i845 chipsets. The chip maker released a total of eight variants on the original SDRAM supporting i845 chipset. Those iterations include the bandwidth-starving i845, the i845D which allowed the Pentium 4 to use DDR memory, the i845E/G which introduced the 533 MHz FSB, and the i845PE/GE which brought DDR333 support to the table. Lesser known i845's included the i845GL and i845GV which were both low cost P4 chipsets with integrated 'Intel Extreme' video.
As great and reliable as the i845D and onward were, they could never quench the Pentium 4 processors' (not even a 400 MHz model!) thirst for memory bandwidth. In fact, it could be said that the changes to the i845 series were more of an evolutionary path, but late last year when Intel released the E7205 (Granite Bay) chipset the revolution started.
While the E7205 was officially a workstation chipset, Intel had finally offered up a dual channel DDR based chipset that could provide the Pentium 4 with sufficient bandwidth! The seeds were sown, and it was only a matter of time before Intel would bring dual channel DDR to the masses.
Intel's i865 Sprindale dual channel DDR chipet.
In April of this year Intel released the i875P 'Canterwood' chipset which officially replaced the i850E as the top of the line desktop northbridge. Chipzilla said "bu-by" to RDRAM in the high-end Pentium 4 desktop world, but interestingly enough released nothing new for mainstream desktop computers to work with. The i845PE would have to last out a little while longer until i865 Springdale was ready.
The release of the Intel i865 'Springdale' chipset comes today, and Intel has released no fewer than three flavours (i865P/G/PE) to choose from.
|
|
FULL STORY @
PCSTATS
(http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1390)
|
|
|
