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 This
is the kind of article that PC Hardware Tech Editors live
for, not only a simple one-on-one comparison, but a
full-blown, knock-em-down, street fight for bragging
rights. Actually, we think round-ups like this are
similar to a beauty pageant. Sure, there's plenty of
good-lookers on the stage, but which of them has that
special something which will distinguish them from the
rest? Bikini jokes aside, it's what separates the
stellar candidates from the mundane, that really makes for
an interesting showcase, or reading, in this case.
What will each board bring to the table in its effort to
claim the top spot? Will it come down to the fastest
performer, the best looking board or perhaps the number of
goodies in the bundle? Or will any of the boards
bring all three aspects into one fine package?
Following
right on the heels of
Marco's roundup of some I875-based motherboards, we
focus today on the Canterwood's little brother, otherwise
known as Springdale or the i865PE. It's been quite a
while since we have seen this much enthusiasm in the Intel
camp, as both of these chipsets have really brought the
performance edge back to the Pentium 4 side. Quick
to follow up on their Canterwood offerings, all of the
major manufacturers have created their own take on the
Springdale chipset and we have five of them on display
here today. So, without further hesitation, let's
bring out the contestants.
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR
AN ENLARGED VIEW
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Specifications
of
the Intel i865PE "Springdale" Chipset |
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The
Canterwood's little brother |
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Don't be too
surprised if the block diagram above looks familiar.
The Canterwood and Springdale boards are basically the
same architecture. The only major differences
between the two would be a memory system enhancement
dubbed "PAT", short for Performance Acceleration
Technology, and ECC-checking capabilities for the memory.
ECC won't be a big issue for most users out there, but
what about PAT? Early results were dubious as to
whether or not PAT was really making a difference, but the
general feeling was, having it was better than not.
So, the Springdale-based boards would already be at a
disadvantage -- or so it would seem. More on this
later. Other main attractions of Springdale are its
Dual-Channel DDR400 support, AGP8X graphics, CSA (Communication
Streaming Architecture) networking
technology, a native SATA interface built into the ICH5
and ICH5R South Bridges and support for 800MHz Bus
Hyper-Threaded CPUs. For the first time in a
mainstream chipset, RAID capabilities are built in as
well. The ICH5R South Bridge natively supports RAID
0 and RAID 1 for serial ATA hard drives. It's a
combination of truly robust features that make the I865PE
a chipset to be reckoned with. At $30-50 cheaper
than a comparable i875 product, it's also a great bargain
as well. But, what if the Springdale boards somehow,
someway, could also support PAT? Would that make the
Springdale the perfect scenario, great price and high
performance?
It's PAT (or is it?):
Soon after the
official release of the first batch of Springdale-based
boards, rumors began to circulate about certain
manufacturers "cracking the PAT code". Intel even
speaks of PAT as a sort of performance selection, rather
than true innovation. Much like the way CPUs are
binned, the two new chipsets appeared to be speed binned
i875Ps. Some are capable of the timings required for
PAT operation, the others fall into the 865PE bin.
Asus was the first to officially claim that their board,
the P4P800 would support PAT, but eventually would back
off from this statement under pressure from Intel.
Intel, you see, claims that PAT is a unique feature to
Canterwood boards, and cannot be simply "enabled" by
ordinary means.
So, where does
that leave us now? Instead of risking future battles
with Intel, Asus (and others) would eventually incorporate
some kind of memory performance enhancement technology,
but label it as something else. Stop by Asus'
website, and you will surely see their advertisement for
HyperPath. Abit has gone to great lengths to promote
their Game Accelerator technology. In fact, as long
as Intel doesn't make any drastic changes with a new rev
of the 865PE chipset, just about all of the boards have,
or will have, a PAT-like enhancement in the BIOS, it's
just a matter of when. In the course of writing this
review, we set out to test using the absolute latest BIOS
files available to us, and in almost every case the
performance gains were more than noticable. Early
reviews on some of the boards we are going to look at
today will not show the true potential they are capable
of. Whether or not it's called PAT, or some other
fancy marketing term, we don't care. What we do care
about is that it works, and unlocks a whole new level of
performance for these boards.
Let's Take A Look At
The Boards...
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