Next Generation Motherboard Platforms - Part 2: Intel's 820

While we'd love to see integrated ethernet make its way from the dream world to a reality, the fact of the matter is that the demand isn't great enough to see this change come about. We will hopefully begin to see more motherboards ship with integrated ethernet as an option, but the day when it is a standard feature is nowhere near upon us.

A trend we noticed with BX motherboards as the chipset aged was the trend towards jumperless setups controlled primarily or entirely within the BIOS setup. While there will still be the exceptions, we expect this trend to continue into the upcoming i820 motherboards. The trend is towards making the motherboard a less intimidating and more elegant device and while the basic function will not change, the market does dictate how it evolves and the tweaker/enthusiast market has definitely dictated a need for a jumperless setup. This unfortunately contributes to the death of one of our favorite motherboard manufacturers, ABIT. For years ABIT has relied on their patented SoftMenu technology to sell motherboards. But when other manufacturers started offering similar jumperless CPU setups, ABIT began to lose some of their attractive nature. In the end, unless ABIT explores the unexplored (a truly overclockable Athlon motherboard could be the key…) they're going to end up among the ranks of the rest of the motherboard manufacturers and they will fade away and step out of the lime light that they've become accustomed to.

Overclocking on i820 boards won't be much different from their BX counterparts with the major differences being the FSB speeds offered as options. With the 133MHz FSB frequency as the standard, the first logical move would be towards that magical 150MHz setting. At 150MHz the AGP frequency is still within reasonable limits at 75MHz and the stress put on the RDRAM can be reduced to nothing as the RDRAM frequency multiplier can be adjusted (2.0x - 4.0x). The true test will end up being how well the 160MHz FSB frequency is implemented as an overclocker's option. At 150MHz we're already pushing the limits of the GTL+ bus, which was originally only designed for 66/100MHz operation. Now at 133MHz, how far can it be pushed before the true limits are seen?

Pushing the RDRAM frequency is another issue to look for in upcoming i820 motherboards. Motherboards should allow for the manual setting of the RDRAM frequency multiplier. Of the three boards we took a look at, only the Intel board would not allow for this manipulation to be performed manually (which is expected, they don't really endorse overclocking or tweaking of any sort). Expect this trend to continue as boards begin flowing from, among others, ASUS and ABIT in the near future.

The real question here may not be what should I look for in an i820 board, but should I be looking at in an i820 board? The answer is a bit blurry right now. If you ask Micron, they'll tell you that the Apollo Pro 133A from VIA is a much better solution. If you ask Dell or Gateway, they'll tell you the opposite. Where do we stand? Give us a week, and you'll find out ;)