Intel 845 Chipset Review & Motherboard Roundup: September 2001

"A Stable Platform"

Because of the limited memory bandwidth of the current i845 motherboards, Intel is positioning the solution as the next-generation stable platform for businesses.  The generation that this platform will be replacing is, of course, the age-old BX chipset; it isn't a surprise that motherboard manufacturers in Taiwan all referred to the i845 as the next-BX. 

Intel is proclaiming the i845 to be a stable platform for businesses to upgrade to.  Obviously, a biased statement since Intel does want to push Pentium 4 sales, but as we heard from manufacturers in Taiwan over the summer and as we've seen for ourselves over these past few weeks, the i845 on day one is already a very stable and mature chipset. 

Although the performance enthusiast in us all will cringe at the sight of only being able to use PC133 SDRAM, it is embraced by the corporate/IT market that the chipset is targeted at because of its nature as a tried and true solution.  We all know that both DDR SDRAM and RDRAM are "tried and true" solutions as well, but convincing the manager of an IT department that is thousands strong is a bit more difficult.  The target market for the i845 wants a solution that's been around for a while, not necessarily one that's the highest performing. 

With the 0.13-micron Pentium 4 (codename: Northwood) due to receive a 512KB L2 cache, the Pentium 4's dependency on a high-speed memory bus for simple office applications will decrease tremendously.  This is because more data is able to be stored in the processor's L2 cache, eliminating the need to even traverse the memory bus after it’s stored in cache to get to the data when used.

The chipset also supports up to 3GB of PC133 SDRAM; 6 times as much as the older i815 chipset.  Why compare it to the Pentium III's 815 chipset?  Because that is the market that Intel is targeting this solution at.  The businesses that used to be running on Pentium III/815 platforms will be pointed at the Pentium 4/845 as the solution to upgrade to.  The Pentium 4/845 combination, while unable to outperform the Athlon, can offer a significant performance boost over the platform that it is designed to replace: the aging Pentium III/815.

With support for so much memory, the 845 could also be seen as an entry level webserver platform as well. 

The one role that the 845 will not play is the role of the high performance platform; for that role, you'll have to go to the 850 or VIA's P4X266.