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The Socket-478 platform is finally an attractive one, especially so for corporate users with the introduction of the 845G and 845GL. The 845E/G/GL can be thought of as simply being a 845 with support for the new 533MHz quad-pumped FSB in terms of performance, which is not too shabby since the 845 was the best performing DDR266 chipset in our P4 Chipset Roundup. The i82801DB ICH4 finally brings 3 USB 2.0 host controllers, placing the 845E/G/GL's South Bridge on par with competing solutions from VIA and SiS. The integrated Extreme Graphics, while not exactly something to write home about does bring about interesting ideas concerning graphics memory bandwidth conservation. Its GeForce2 MX200 level 3D performance is more than sufficient for the corporate user, casual gamer, or those of you whom are building a brand new Pentium 4 system and would rather let the dust settle after the launch of the NV30, NV35 and R300 later this year. Although one would have to sacrifice resolution and color-depth, as the saying goes "no pain no gain".
That said however, some features conspicuously missing are AGP 8X, ATA-133 and DDR333 support. Intel's RDRAM-based 850E chipset is also missing these features, and furthermore, is using the now outmoded i82801BA ICH2. It would be a reasonable conclusion that there will probably be another Intel chipset release towards the ends of the year, quite possibly at the Intel Developers' Forum. For now, the 845G is an excellent DDR266 solution from Intel, and the fairly decent integrated graphics should make 845G-based motherboards a hot sell for value-oriented end-users, corporate and end-users whom for some reason or another are just leery of non-Intel chipsets.
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