Intel announces DDR333 Chipsets: 3-way 845PE shootout

Albatron PX845PEV Pro: BIOS and Overclocking

Albatron went with the Phoenix BIOS for their 845PE-based motherboard. Phoenix BIOSes aren't terribly common, but we've used their BIOSes with great success in the past, and hope for much of the same with this motherboard.

The PC Health section (called "Hardware Monitor" in this BIOS) is quite good. You get full readings on just about everything you really need, including PSU readings (all rails), CPU temperature readings, Vcore readings, System temperature readings, and a case open warning temperature option.

Albatron was good enough to include some decent DRAM tweaking options in the Advanced Chipset Features section. You're able to adjust CAS Latency, Precharge to Active, Active to Precharge, and Active to CMD. There are no options for enabling Fast, Turbo or Ultra mode, and there are no Command Rate or Bank Interleave adjustments either. This limits the usefulness of the Advanced Chipset Features section, but the basic elements are still present.

The FSB adjustments available via the BIOS are pretty straight forward; you can adjust FSB as high as 243MHz. This is obviously overkill; even the most adventurous overclockers will find it difficult to reach this level of performance. The DRAM:CPU ratios are pretty good, certainly enough to get the job done for most overclockers and memory tweakers out there. Your ratio options include 2.0X, 2.5X, and 2.66X. These are not independent ratios, meaning that when you raise the FSB, memory is also raised accordingly.

Albatron added some good voltage tweaking options to their PX845PEV Pro motherboard. Among these adjustments are an adjustable VDIMM up to 2.8V. Hardcore memory overclockers will definitely like this quite common VDIMM option. AGP voltage is adjustable up to 1.6V, which is only mediocre for the hardcore video card overclockers out there. Finally, we see a table for adjusting Vcore to as high as 1.85V. However, you must be aware that default Vcore (which is normally 1.5V for Northwood-B processors) is actually lower as read by the BIOS' Hardware Monitor. In fact, Vcore fluctuates between 1.42-1.44V when Vcore is manually set to 1.5V in the BIOS. Therefore, in reality, this board only goes as high as 1.78-1.8V, which isn't too bad at all really.

We've tested quite a few 845 motherboards in the past that have included an option for fixing the AGP/PCI buses at 66MHz/33MHz. The Albatron PX845PEV Pro follows suit, implementing an AGP/PCI lock at 66MHz/33MHz no matter the FSB/memory speed. This is a great feature to have if you're an overclocker that doesn't want to damage his hardware by running an AGP or PCI card too far out of spec.

As far as overclocking was concerned, the Albatron PX845PEV Pro ended up doing a fantastic job. The following table lists the components we used for overclocking the FSB:

With this testbed, we were able to hit 166MHz FSB (this will be the next speed grade Intel hits once Prescott goes online in 2003). This is close to a 600MHz overclock, or 2.83GHz clock speed, all on default core voltage. 2.83GHz is quite the feat with such a conservative overclocking setup. Seasoned Intel 845 users will not be too shocked at these numbers; Intel's track record for quality chipsets (and ones that overclock well for that matter) hasn't changed a bit with the 845PE.

The overclocking success doesn't stop there either. We decided to see how high we could overclock our memory as well. We used three types of DDR400 modules for the memory overclocking tests. Here are the results:

These are some very impressive numbers to say the least. Intel officially claims that the 845PE chipset is validated for no higher than DDR333 operation, however we were able to reach as high as 439MHz on default VDIMM (we'll get into our memory stability tests a bit later).

It didn't come as a surprise to us that the Corsair memory won out for highest overclock. Corsair's XMS series of memory continues to impress us with each passing day. Mushkin's DDR400 impressed us as well, coming in at 431MHz. Twinmos took the third spot in this round, finishing up at 421MHz.

Albatron PX845PEV Pro: Stress Testing

We ran a whole array of tests on the Albatron PX845PEV Pro to see exactly what its strengths and weaknesses were. We tested the PX845PEV Pro in several different areas and configurations, including:

1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing was conducted by running the FSB at 166MHz.
2. Memory stress testing was conducted by running RAM at 333MHz with all banks filled and at 400MHz with all banks filled. We used the most aggressive timings possible.

We attempted to break the Albatron PX845PEV Pro by running the FSB at 166MHz. Memory frequency wasn't a concern, since our main goal was to see how well the board would hold up under FSB pressure. Running at 166MHz FSB, we were able to stability operate the Albatron PX845PEV Pro for hours at a time. We rerun our most intensive benchmarks (like SPECviewperf) over and over again, in addition to Prime95 torture tests. We weren't able to see any signs of instability whatsoever at 166MHz FSB. We were very pleased with these results.

Moving on to the memory tests, the Albatron PX845PEV Pro was able to reliably run three sticks of Corsair CAS2 DDR400 at 333MHz at the following timings:

We had to back off on Active to Precharge, but other than that these are good timings to be running your DDR333 memory at.

Even though the 845PE chipset does not officially or unofficially support DDR400 memory (and neither does Albatron), we decided to run DDR400 tests on the PX845PEV Pro anyway.

These settings are definitely very impressive for two DIMMs of DDR400, especially considering neither Intel nor Albatron guarantee DDR400 operation.