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Date |
: Apr 2nd, 2002 |
| Category |
: Chipset |
| Manufacturer |
: Various |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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Around last September, Intel introduced the i845 chipset. To address the cost concerns of the i850 RDRAM platform, the i845 supported standard PC133 SDRAM. The Pentium 4's 64-bit, quad-pumped 100MHz FSB offers 3.2GB/s of peak bandwidth to the processor. Ideally, the available peak memory bandwidth should match of even exceed this figure to minimize any bottlenecks. PC133 SDRAM can only offer a peak bandwidth of 1.06GB/s, only 1/3 the amount. As the Pentium 4's performance depends heavily on memory bandwidth, the i845 severely impeded its performance. Still, the i845 sold well, pulling market share away from AMD. Informed consumers however, shied away from the P4 altogether, opting instead for an AMD solution.
After a legal row with VIA, Intel finally bowed to market pressure and released their highly anticipated i845D chipset, being essentially the same chipset as the i845, but with DDR capability allowed to be utilized. It is also a two chip solution, consisting of the i82845 MCH (Memory Controller Hub) and the i82801BA ICH2 (I/O Controller Hub). The i82845 MCH supports either PC133, DDR200 or DDR266 memory, and obviously also asynchronous memory bus and FSB operation for PC133 and DDR266 support. The i82801BA is a carry-over from i850, i815 and i810 chipsets, which accounts for the reason why the feature set of the i845 seems a little dated; only 2 USB host controllers (4 USB ports), ATA-100, and a maximum memory capacity of 2GB (compared to the 3GB or higher limit of the P4X266 and SiS645).
However, some motherboard manufacturers like MSI and EPoX have equipped their boards with additional features such as ATA-133 RAID. Such is the case with our Intel i845D chipset test platform - the MSI 845 Ultra-ARU. An excellent contender as a motherboard, the 845 Ultra-ARU has good layout (aside from the RAID headers being placed right at the bottom), good stability (no crashes observed during tests) and feature set : 3 DIMM slots, 5 PCI slots (all full-length capable) and hardware-based 6 channel integrated audio.
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