Intel 875P (Canterwood) Chipset - The New Flagship

The 800MHz FSB is Here

Originally the 800MHz FSB was planned only for Prescott, the upcoming 90nm Pentium 4 core, but with Intel running into thermal and manufacturing walls with their current 0.13-micron process they needed another method of keeping performance competitive without resorting to increasing clock speeds.

We've already described, in great detail, the benefits of moving to an 800MHz FSB in our Sneak Peek article as well as our review of the first 800MHz FSB CPU - the Pentium 4 3.0C. The 875P chipset is the first new chipset from Intel to offer official support for the 800MHz FSB frequency; seeing as how the chipset is positioned as the flagship solution for the Pentium 4 it's no surprise that it's being launched alongside the 3.0C, the flagship 800MHz FSB processor.

Benefit of 800MHz FSB Performance Improvement of 800MHz over 533MHz FSB Content Creation Winstone 2003 Busines Winstone 2002 Unreal Tournament 2003 (Flyby) Unreal Tournament 2003 (Botmatch) Quake III Arena Jedi Knight 2 Comanche 4 MPEG4 Encoding SPECviewperf - 3dsmax01 SPECviewperf - drv08 SPECviewperf - dx07 SPECviewperf - light05 SPECviewperf - proe01 SPECviewperf - ugs01 0.0% 1.6% 4.7% 5.8% 7.3% 8.3% 2.5% 6.1% 5.0% 11.6% 6.1% 7.9% 9.4% 0.0% | 0 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 12 | 14

Enabling 800MHz FSB support on the 875P chipset itself was more of a validation task for Intel; in fact, the amount of work Intel had to do in order to enable the support was relatively minimal considering that many 845PE chipsets will work fine at the increased frequency. Intel will not be offering 845PE chipsets with official support for the 800MHz FSB, so approach such boards at your own risk.

One thing to keep in mind about the 875P chipset is that it will not work with 400MHz FSB CPUs, only 800/533MHz parts. If you want 400MHz FSB support you'll have to wait for the 865/Springdale chipset.

Given that a 64-bit 800MHz FSB offers at most 6.4GB/s of bandwidth between the Memory Controller Hub (MCH aka North Bridge) and the CPU, what sort of memory subsystem does the 875P use to offer balanced bandwidth between the MCH and the memory banks?