Intel 925X/915: Chipset Performance & DDR2
by Wesley Fink on June 19, 2004 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
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The introduction of new processors from Intel is always a media event, but the launch of new Intel chipsets becomes a major event. As the largest player in the chipset market, the innovations in Intel's new chipsets always have a profound influence, not just on the Pentium 4 processor market, but on the VIA, nVidia, SiS, and other designs for both Intel and AMD Processors. Intel is more than the largest maker of chipsets, they are also the yardstick by which every other chipset and chipset maker is measured.With the introduction of the Enthusiast 925X chipset, known as Alderwood during development, and the Mainstream 915 chipset, known as Grantsdale, Intel has raised the stakes even more than usual. Not only are we seeing new chipsets, but attached are a new CPU socket 775 called Socket T, a new bus Technology called PCI Express, a new Graphics Card slot called x16 PCIe, and a new memory technology called DDR2. Those are just the highlights, since we are also seeing additional changes attached to these technologies - like new heatsinks, new power supplies, High-Definition audio, and Matrix Raid. The last time Intel attempted such a wholesale change in PC architecture was the introduction of Pentium 4 and Rambus memory. History showed Rambus to be a failure in the market, but the rest of the technology eventually did find its way into the mainstream computer market. The changes in this round are even more profound on the surface than the Rambus introduction, since they involve even more architectural changes. These are the greatest changes to the PC in over a decade.
All of this means that Intel plans to change almost everything about your PC. With all the new slots, sockets, peripherals and connectors, we take a closer look at whether the new also means improved performance. How does 925X perform compared to 875P? What are the performance differences in the 925X and 915 chipsets? Does DDR2 really perform better than DDR?
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gsellis - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
I am with #4 and #16, it is OK to leave the Northwood, but this is not apples to apples if you did not use two Prescotts to compare the boards to get a percentage difference in the architecture. The 'weak' areas almost match up to a Prescott vs Northwood comparison. It does not tell anything. Sorry Wesley, but the conclusion is flawed on a direct comparison.Bozo Galora - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
and notice the alderwood gigabyte only has the single red intel IDE, no greenieshttp://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/i...
Bozo Galora - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Tom's says new Intel chipsets are O/C locked - tied to PLLhttp://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040619_1103...
Kahless - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Am i missing something or is intel not as familiar with there own products as ATI...ie just read about ATI's chipset optimized for prescott and its faster than northwood which is a change from most benchmark comparisons on other boards ...http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2...
ZobarStyl - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
Combined with the fact that they gonna start putting all this new tech on BTX format, Intel is really trying hard to completely remove itself from the DIY market. And although your average computer buyer doesn't even know what an AMD processor is, you can bet that OEM's are too happy about being asked to either a) swallow the cost of these upgrades or b) raise prices and lose customers, and this might make them eye AMD as a way to shore up the bottom line. Being a trendsetter is one thing but bringing in DDRII when it's slower and PCI-E when it offers practically no benefit isn't exactly blazing a trail that I want to follow...JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"I can honestly say that is the FIRST time I have ever read that phrase.
Falloutboy525 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
from what i've read on ddr2 it won't start make a big performance difference unless its clocked almost twice the speed as the ddr1 your compairing it to due to the fact all ddr2 is is 2 ddr1 chips dual channeld run thru a buffer. so when your running at 400mhz ddr2 the latency is the same as ddr200 due to the speed the chips are running at not the external frequency.Marlin1975 - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD is too pricey"WTF?
You can get a Athlon64 chip for less then $199 now and there is a sempron 3100+ socket 754 chip that has a MSRP of only $124
AMD hsa the best bang for the buck if you want low/mid end (atlon XP) or even mid/high end (Athlon 64/fx)
I went from a 800Mhz FSB HT P4 to a Athlon64 and and glad I did.
Zebo - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"I agree socket 939 is way overpriced, especially for the underdog AMD who has an opporunity to make real enroads into the market with Intel down right now... but the rest of this is untrue. Socket 754 3200+ is the same price and P4 3.2 and they split the benchmarks. I'd argue for gamers the A64 3200+ is underpriced. Then intels performance is just fine unless you call 5-10% differences here and there signifigant. I don't and i doubt you'd even notice without charts to prove it.
tfranzese - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
"AMD performs great till you give it too much to do at once, and they won't fix that till they bring in dual core."Every processor is like this, Hyper-Threading doesn't save any Intel chip from this same thing. Benchmarks like Winstone, etc are benchmarking with multitasking in mind.
"AMD is too pricey and Intel performance is pathetic"
lol, it's ironic, but I'm glad AMD is where they are. They certainly aren't the same company there were 8 years ago.