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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/779
Computex 2001 - Intel & VIA Pentium 4 DDR Chipsets Revealed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 4, 2001 12:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
This year's Computex 2001 hasn't been going on for more than a couple of hours and we already have a second update for you all. The first performance numbers from the i845 chipset are in and we now know the real story behind why Intel is so hesitant to release the DDR version of the Brookdale chipset.
We suggest you look at our initial coverage of Day 1 before proceeding with this article. But without further ado, here we go…
The Saga Continues
We reported earlier today that Intel was forcing motherboard manufacturers to remove their VIA promotional balloons from their booths on the Computex show floor, well the process is continuing. Last night Intel was only forcing the major motherboard manufacturers to pull them, but now even some of the smaller ones are succumbing to the pressure as well.
Although none of them are happy about the pressure they cannot do anything about it. Luckily for VIA, there are a few companies that still have their balloons up but none of them are large by any extent.
Now onto the important information.
i845 Performance and DDR
The Intel 845 chipset, formerly known as Brookdale, has been seen all over the show floor. There isn't too much to say about the version being displayed everywhere since it only offers PC133 SDRAM support as we reported in earlier coverage. The truly interesting thing about the i845 chipset is that in its current state it supports DDR SDRAM. Intel has simply not allowed motherboard manufacturers to design DDR i845 motherboards until they give the go ahead.
Iwill's i845 PC133 SDRAM board
If you're wondering why, the reason is simple; Intel has an agreement with Rambus in place that limits what they can do with DDR chipsets. Through some very heavy negotiations Intel has managed to get Rambus to allow them to promote the i845 with DDR support as early as January 1, 2002. Our sources tell us that Intel will continue to push for an even earlier release of DDR i845 platforms but as of now, motherboard manufacturers can't show off or promote DDR i845 motherboards until January 1, 2002. The DDR i845 chipset will still be called the i845 since it is essentially the same chip.
Stability of the i845 chipset, even with DDR SDRAM, is supposed to be incredible. motherboard manufacturers are already claiming it to be the new BX chipset and are expecting it to last for approximately two years in the market. There won't be any DDR replacements for the i845 anytime according to Intel's roadmap.
We weren't able to get a picture of the few DDR i845 solutions floating around the show but we'll work on snagging you one if possible.
In terms of performance, we were able to get some rough estimates of how the i845 stacks up to the i850. Remember that these aren't by any means official benchmarks and we can't even disclose test parameters, just relative performance metrics at this point.
As you can see, early performance indicators are still putting the i850 at the highest performance level for the Pentium 4. We've always speculated as to how well DDR SDRAM would do against RDRAM on the Pentium 4 platform, it seems as if the Pentium 4 may actually notice the difference between the 2.1GB/s peak of DDR and the 3.2GB/s of bandwidth offered by RDRAM.
VIA's P4X266
With information now on how DDR is performing on the Pentium 4 platform we tried to get some input on how VIA's DDR solution is stacking up. According to motherboard manufacturers, Intel isn't too happy about them displaying or talking about VIA's P4X266 chipset (VIA's DDR P4 solution) either.
We managed to grab a few snapshots of a P4X266 mockup we were shown behind closed doors at the show however according to the motherboard manufacturers we've talked to, the chipset isn't ready and won't be until Q3 of this year.
There isn't much for VIA to work out with the chipset since the DDR memory controller is borrowed from the upcoming KT266 rev 2, as is the South Bridge and AGP controllers. The only real thing VIA had to perfect was the P4 AGTL+ bus interface.
Current expectations for the P4X266 are that it will come in slightly below that of the i845 DDR however none of the motherboard manufacturers we talked to had any data to back that up.
The one advantage the P4X266 will have over the i845 is that it will support up to four DIMM slots while the i845 only supports two slots. Apparently designing a motherboard with support for 4 DDR SDRAM slots is quite difficult and even implementing it on current Pro266 designs was quite a challenge. Keep in mind that there is a difference between having four DIMM slots on a motherboard and being able to actually run 4 x 512MB modules in the slots at full load.
For now, it's back to the show. As usual, we'll keep you posted…