Quick Updates

Page Updated: 31/07/2004

Intel's new 915 (entry level) and 925 chipsets for motherboards adds support for Intel new LGA775 processors. The Pentium P4s will move over to the 775 pin socket and production of the 478 pin CPUs will cease. The new chipsets also add support for DDRII and PCI-Express, a new type of slot with increased bandwidth that is expected to take over from AGP.

Intel Tumwater chip for dual CPU boards adds 800 MHz FSB support for Xeon processors along with support for DDRII (ECC), PCI Express, and Intel's new (Nocona) Xeon processors.

Page Updated: 05/01/2004

Intel's New 7205 and 875P chipsets are not as fast as the 850E which is almost two years old! 

No updates to report. The latest chipset is still the 875P - see info below.

Page Updated: 22/06/03

Intel's latest chipset is the Canterwood (Intel 875P) chipset: It has support for 800 MHz FSB processors and dual channel DDR SDRAM. (The cheaper version is the 865 chipset called Springdale)

Motherboards like the Asus P4C800 have Intel's new chipset but because they use DDR SDRAM (DDR266 - DDR400) they are still underperforming Intel's two year old 850e chipset motherboards using 32 bit RDRAM (Rambus RIMMs). However they do have newer features that the RAMBUS motherboards never offered, including USB 2.0, firewire and Gigabit LAN.

Various reviews on the internet including this one praise the Intel 875P chipset as the fastest around but these reviews are noticeably flawed by the fact that they did not include an RDRAM based motherboard in the test. Tests like this one at Tom's Hardware are more in line with what we've experienced.

Interesting development:

SiS 658 and SiS 659: Sis is working on a chipset that will support RDRAM and 800 MHz FSB Pentium P4s.  more >>
(Not yet available - we will include newer motherboards as and when available and subject to the results of our in-house testing)

Various chipsets for motherboards that take Intel 478 pin Pentium P4s. Full comparison table and more >>

Page Updated: 27/03/2003

From Tom's Hardware:

The E7205 and E7505 chipsets (codenamed Granite Bay) are Intel's first offer of dual-channel DDR-SDRAM with AGP 8X support. The chipsets can be used on both Pentium 4 and Xeon platforms... more

The following motherboards are the first to be released with the new chipset/s. 

• Asus P4G8X (our PC model Poweroid 7204)

• Gigabyte GA-8INXP

• Tyan Trinity i7205 S2662

• Tyan Tiger i7500 S2722

So does this mean faster PCs? Well, yes and no. 

There is support for up to 4GB of main system memory, support for dual channel DDR SDRAM which delivers memory bandwidth up to a staggering 4.3GB/sec. The next generation of HT enabled Pentium4 processors are fully support along with an AGP 8x Graphics Bus, Gigabit LAN, USB 2.0 and Dual 1394 Firewire ports. But...

At Poweroid we are disappointed that the performance of these new chipsets falls disappointing short of our current top PCs (like the Poweroid 9210). The Intel 850E chipset with PC 1066 RDRAM is still the fastest on the planet. See some benchmarking results: Tom's Hardware 

Note also that there the reported problems with these new Intel E7505 and E7205 chipsets Inquirer News Site does not affect the Poweroid 7204.