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The Pentium 4
definitely has had it fair share of struggle and strife.
In part, one of the reasons why Intel took some "heat" about
the P4, was their choice of system memory interface.
True, RAMBUS does provide serious bandwidth advantages over
legacy PC133 subsystems but cost factors and business
practices of Intel's memory partner, have proven to be a
serious thorn in their side. Not too long after the
release of Pentium 4, arch rival AMD signed up in the DDR
SDRAM camp and provided a lower cost alternative with
bandwidth in the same ballpark as Intel's RAMBUS solution.
It became evident that regardless of performance, Intel also
needed a solution for the value segment and RAMBUS couldn't
be part of that picture.
Naturally, one would think that a DDR SDRAM P4 solution
would be a logical move for Intel. However, with so
much invested in the RAMBUS architecture, Intel wasn't going
to steal their own thunder by ushering in new memory support
so soon,
that would compete head on with RDRAM. No, instead
they decided to take an interim step backwards somewhat, to
PC133 SDRAM again and then follow on later in Q1 '02, with a
DDR SDRAM i845 solution for the P4.
The following two
motherboards are some of the first to hit the market based
on the i845 chipset with SDRAM support.
MSI and
Asus
sent in evaluation units to the HotHardware Labs and we're
here to tell you about the features and performance within
these two Intel value platforms.
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| Dualing i845s - The MSI 845Pro2-R
and Asus P4B |
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Pentium4
Motherboards loaded with creature comforts -
Specifications |
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The i845
Chipset - Block Diagram - Socket 478 System Architecture
The heart of the
two motherboards we have on the test bench today, is the
i845 chipset from Intel. As you can see, it supports
all of the standard interfaces, including integrated 10/100
LAN (optionally configured by the motherboard manufacturer
but support is there) and 6 channel audio. One obvious
drawback is noted here however, the bandwidth available
across the memory bus is limited to 1.06GB per second.
This is far below that of the i850's Dual Channel RDRAM
interface, at 3.2GB/second.
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MSI
845Pro2-R
CPU
-- Supports Intel®
Pentium® 4 processor in the 478 pin package.
-- Supports 1.3 ~ 2GHz and up.
Chipset
Intel® 845 (593 FC-BGA) Chipset
- AGP 4x slot
- Support PC133 SDRAM
Intel® ICH2 Chipset
- AC'97 Controller Integrated
- 2 full IDE channels, up to ATA100
- Low pin count interface for SIO
FSB
- Support 100MHz FSB
- Support 400MHz Intel NetBurst micro-architecture bus.
Main Memory
-- Supports three PC133 SDRAM slots.
-- Supports up to 3GB memory size.
Slots
-- One AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) 4x slot (1.5V
only)
-- One CNR (Communication Network Riser) slot
On-Board IDE
-- An IDE controller on the ICH2 chipset provides IDE
HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA66/100
operation modes.
-- Can connect up to four IDE devices.
-- IDE RAID 0, 1 supported by Promise PDC20265R (for 845
Pro2-R only).
Audio
C-Media CMI8738 / PCI-6ch supports 2/4/6 channel sound
On-Board Peripherals
On-Board Peripherals include:
- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with 360K, 720K, 1.2M,
1.44M and 2.88Mbytes.
- 2 serial ports (COM A + COM B)
- 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 4 USB ports (Rear * 2/ Front * 2)
- 1 audio/game port
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Asus P4B
CPU
-- Supports Intel®
Pentium® 4 processor in the 478 pin package.
-- Supports 1.3 ~ 2GHz and up.
Chipset
Intel® 845 (593 FC-BGA) Chipset
- AGP 4x slot
- Support PC133 SDRAM
Intel® ICH2 Chipset
- AC'97 Controller Integrated
- 2 full IDE channels, up to ATA100
- Low pin count interface for SIO
FSB
- Support 100MHz FSB
- Support 400MHz Intel NetBurst micro-architecture bus.
Main Memory
-- Supports three PC133 SDRAM slots.
-- Supports up to 3GB memory size.
Slots
-- One AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) 4x slot (1.5V
only)
-- One CNR (Communication Network Riser) slot
On-Board IDE
-- An IDE controller on the ICH2 chipset provides IDE
HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA66/100
operation modes.
-- Can connect up to four IDE devices.
Audio
Optional audio for S/PDIF-out (SONY/Philips Digital
Interface)
On-Board Peripherals include:
- 1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with 360K, 720K, 1.2M,
1.44M and 2.88Mbytes.
- 2 serial ports (COM A + COM B)
- 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
- 4 USB ports (Rear * 2/ Front * 2)
- 1 audio/game port
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MSI's 845Pro2-R :
These two boards are setup almost
identically, with the exception of the MSI's on board
Promise ATA100 RAID controller. We've always liked
RAID equipped boards for the simple fact that you can
attached up to 4 drives, each on their own channel.
This is great for those who have both DVD and CD-RW drives
in their systems and need to have a dedicated channel for
the burner. Of course, the added drive performance
that a RAID 0 configuration brings, is nothing to sneeze at
either.
Additionally,
the MSI board uses the C-Media CMI8738 chip for its on board
sound.
The 845Pro2-R
also comes bundled with a number of trinkets including
additional USB cabling and an active heat-sink/fan assembly
that you can attach in place of the passive chipset cooling,
that is installed on the board when it ships.
Let's have a
closer look at the Asus P4B.
The Asus P4B Up Close and Personal,
BIOS Comparison and Overclocking
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