Intel 925X/915: Chipset Performance & DDR2
by Wesley Fink on June 19, 2004 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Chipset Feature Comparison
With all of the new chipset options and features, a scorecard might help to understand the new 925X/915 chipsets and supported options.|
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| 1 Adaptive Synchronization aligns to the closest FSB to memory clock ratio, setting memory channel to 320 MHz. 2 Does not support Pentium® 4 or Celeron® processors with a .18µ core. 3 ICH5R support Intel® RAID. 4 Supports only Pentium® 4 processors based on 90nm manufacturing technology 5 Hyper-Threading Technology support starting with B-step. 6 DDR 333 support starting with Bstep. |
If you look closely at the features, you will see that Intel High-Definition audio is available on all the new chipsets, even the value-oriented 915GV. This is only part of the story, however, since the Southbridge must be combined with an audio codec that supports all the High-Definition features. You will need to look closely at the motherboard specifications to see what audio features are actually supported by the motherboard manufacturer.
Intel's commitment to Gigabit LAN is also apparent in the across-the-board support for Gigabit LAN on the new 775 chipsets. PCI Express x16 is the only Graphics Slot supported. 4 SATA ports and one IDE channel are available on all the new 775 chipsets.
Much good and bad has been reported about Intel's use of DDR2 with the new 925X/915 chipset. Intel is apparently hedging their bets on DDR2, since you will see that DDR2 is only required for the top-end 925X. All of the 915 chipsets can support either DDR or DDR2, depending on what the motherboard manufacturer chooses to support. There are even a few dual-memory socket 775 boards, like the Gigabyte that we use later in the review to compare the performance of DDR and DDR2 memory. Intel is clearly supporting DDR2 on the Intel 915 board that we are testing, but most 3rd party manufacturers appear to be supporting DDR on their 915 motherboards.
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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.