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New data from Intel's future chipsets

New data from Intel's future chipsets

As is known, Intel wants to bring its new motherboard chipsets onto the market in the second quarter of the year. These will also support the increased 'Quad-Pumped-Bus' clock of 533 MHz of the new Pentium 4, which will be released at the same time.

The colleagues from x-bit Labs have times again created a great table that we don't want to withhold from you:

i850E i845E i845G i845GL FSB 400/533 MHz 400/533 MHz 400/533 MHz 400 MHz memory types PC1066PC800 RDRAM PC2100PC1600 DDR RAM PC2100PC1600 DDR-RAMPC133 SDRAM PC2100PC1600 DDR-RAMPC133 SDRAM max.Memory 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB Integrated graphics - - yes yes AGP AGP 4x AGP 4x AGP 4x - Housing 615-pin OLGA 593-pin FCBGA 760-pin FCBGA 760 -pin FCBGA I ICH3 ICH4 ICH4 ICH4 ATA ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 ATA/100 USB 1.1 1.1/2.0 1.1/2.0 1.1/2.0 Housing ICH 360-pin EBGA 421-pin MBGA 421-pin M. BGA 421-pin MBGA Price $ 40, - $ 41, - $ 46, - $ 35, -

The clearest difference to the i845/i850 predecessors is the support of the quad-pumped system in the i845E/i850E Bus (QPB) with 533 MHz, and the i850E supports PC1066 RDRAM with a bandwidth of up to 4.2 GB/s, which is already supplied by Samsung. The i845E already has the new Southbridge ICH4, which already includes USB 2.0.

The graphics unit of the i845G has been revised and should now be about five times faster than its predecessor, that would be about as fast as a GeForce2MX 400. Tile rendering, support for 32-bit color depth modes and bump mapping were integrated and the 350 MHz RAMDAC enables resolutions up to 2048x1536.

The i845GL (L = Light) is slimmed down and shouldonly serve for the budget line with Celeron (Willamette) processors, therefore the external AGP port and the 533 MHz QPB are missing.

Of course there are rumors about the other planned chipsets. At the beginning of 2003 another Pentium 4 chipset, code name Springdale, will appear, which will support the 0.09µ CPUs with Prescott core and hyperthread technology. It is supposed to support AGP 8x and gets the ICH5 southbridge aside. This in turn should support Serial ATA and so the Springdale should also support wireless LAN and Gigabit Ethernet, possibly with the help of an additional single-chip solution.

It is still completely unclear which RAM the Springdale supports options are DDR333, DDR II and dual-channel DDR, whereby the latter will be supported by Intel with the 'Granite Bay' chipset, a chipset for workstations.

It is possible that Intel will develop its plans on the examine the ongoing IDF in San Francisco in more detail and provide further information.