The Pentium 4 Chipset Market-

Choices Galore!
Planning to buy a new PC?
If you have in excess of Rs 35,000 you can easily pick up a Pentium 4 chip-based PC.
The Pentium 4 is the latest and perhaps the most popular Intel processor in market
today. However Pentium 4 processors run on various platforms and hence it is
important for you as a buyer to know what to buy and what not to!

In this edition of The ITIQ we take a look at the Pentium 4 chipset market. We
take a look at what is available this May and in the coming months. There is an
increased activity in the Pentium 4 core logic market can be explained by the
upcoming launching of Pentium 4 CPUs on Northwood core with faster 533MHz
Quad Pumped Bus. By tat time all the manufacturers offering their solutions for
Intel processors will prepare new (updated or completely redesigned) products.

Chipsets
We’ll explore the following chipsets in the course of this article:
 Intel 850
 Intel 845
 Intel 845D
 VIA P4X266
 VIA P4X266A
 SiS 645 (two different revisions)
 ALi Aladdin-P4

Intel 850 Intel 845 Intel 845D

North Bridge I82850 i82845 i82845 B-Step
Processor bus 400MHz Quad
Pumped Bus
(3.2GB/sec)
Processor interface Socket478
Memory type Dual-channel PC133/PC100 PC2100/PC1600
PC800 RDRAM SDRAM DDR SDRAM
Max. memory 3.2GB/sec 1.06GB/sec 2GB2 DDR DIMM slots
Bus bandwidth -
Max. memory size 2GB 4 RIMM slots 3GB 3 DIMM slots -
ECC support + -
AGP 4x + + +
Inter-Bridge Hub Link
(266MB/sec)
South Bridge I82801BA
Max. number of PCI 5 5 5
Master
ATA-100/ATA-133 +/- +/- +/-
support
AC’97 + + +
CNR/ACR/AMR support +/-/+ +/-/+ +/-/+
10/100Mbit LAN + + +
USB 1.1 ports 4 4 4
USB 2.0 ports - - -
IEE1394 ports - - -

Old but stable

This is the oldest Pentium 4 core logic, which was launched together with the first
Pentium 4 processor on Willamette core. The major peculiarity of this product is the
support of dual-channel Rambus memory, which allows i850 to provide the highest
memory bus bandwidth of all the today’s chipsets. However, it is exactly because of
RDRAM support, that this solution hasn’t yet become very popular. RDRAM memory
modules have always been much more expensive than the other memory modules,
which pushed the users to decide on different chipsets supporting cheaper memory.
By now, as SDRAM prices keep growing, the cost of RDRAM RIMMs no longer seems
that shockingly high. But the time of i850 still has already passed. RDRAM has no
future, because Intel officially stated that they would no longer support this memory.
Nevertheless, i850 keeps remaining one of the today’s performance leaders among the
existing Pentium 4 chipsets.

This is one of the reasons why in May, Intel is going to announce an updated
modification of its i850 with that only difference from the predecessor that it will
support Pentium 4 CPUs with faster 533MHz bus. However, this chipset revision,
officially called i850E, will for sure become the very last RDRAM chipset from Intel.
Later on the company is going to replace their high-performance RDRAM chipset with
some solutions supporting dual-channel DDR SDRAM, with the bandwidth not in the
least worse than that of the dual-channel RDRAM. By the way, in order to save some
time and trouble Intel didn’t include the support of PC1066 RDRAM into the specs
list of its new i850E. However, unofficially the chipset supports this memory, which
means that the peak memory bandwidth of i850E will be equal to 4.2GB/sec.

VIA P4X266(A) SiS645 Ali Aladdin-P4

North Bridge VIA VT8753(A) SiS645 Ali M1671

Processor bus 400MHz

Quad Pumped
Bus (3.2GB/sec)
Processor interface Socket478
Memory type PC2100/PC1600
DDR SDRAM
Max. memory 2.1GB/sec 2.7GB/sec 2.1GB/sec
busbandwidth
Max. memory size 4GB 3GB 3GB
4 DDR DIMM slots 3 DDR DIMM slots 3 DDR DIMM slots
ECC support + - -
AGP 4x + + +
Inter-Bridge bus V-Link MuTIOL PCI (133MB/sec)
(266MB/sec) (533MB/sec)
South Bridge VIA VT8233(A/C) SiS961 (SiS962) M153D+
Max. number of PCI 5 6 7
Master
ATA-100/ATA-133 +/+* +/+* +/+*
support
AC’97 + + +
CNR/ACR/AMR +/+/+ +/+/+ -/-/+
support
10/100Mbit LAN + + -
USB 1.1 ports 6 6 6
USB 2.0 ports - - -
IEE1394 ports - - -

Low Cost Solution

The first i845 chipset released by the company appeared a kind of disappointment.
As the chipset supported only the slow PC133 SDRAM, the performance of systems
built on this chipset looks dramatically slow especially against the background of
3.2GB/sec Pentium 4 processor bus. However, i845 based systems cost really little
money. That is why i845 based systems cost really little money. That is why i845
managed to become more or less popular among the users and sold pretty well
sometimes.

(Diagram)

Moreover, Intel kept supplying its i845 chipset with PC133 SDRAM support to
the mainboard makers for a while because of the low cost of PC133 SDRAM. This
way they could build low-cost Pentium 4 systems. And only the recent growth of
SDRAM prices made the use of i845 with PC133 SDRAM unprofitable. Anyway, this
chipset still cannot be ignored.

DDR Dynamo
The next version of i845 released a bit later supported DDR SDRAM. I would like to
stress that Intel introduced very few changes in its chipset to make it support new
memory type, so the official name of the new core logic remained unchanged and in
all documents it was mentioned as i845 B0-step.
 However, the mainboard manufacturers decided it would sound better if they
called it i845 with the “D” letter stressing the DDR SDRAM support implemented in
it.

The performance of i845D appeared close to that of i850, which made this
chipset version nearly the most popular of today’s core logic.

Intel realized that the new i845D would remain the most popular and well-
selling solution for the near future that is why the company decided to prepare
another modification of this chipset the i845, which will support processors with
533MHz Quad Pumped Bus.

(Diagram)

Note that besides faster processor bus support, i845E will boast a few more
improvements. In particular, this chipset will boast a new South Bridge supporting
USB 2.0 ports.

Though the memory controller of i845E will remain the same as by the
predecessors and the chipset will also work only with PC1600/PC2100 DDR SDRAM.

By the way, there will be another version of i845E with the integrated graphics
core known as i845G.

The basic features will be just the same as those of i845E. As for the graphics
core, it will be a completely new solution based on tile architecture. According to
some preliminary info, its performance will be comparable with that of NVIDIA
GeForce2 MX.

Nothing official about them

Before Intel decided to introduce some DDR chipsets fro Pentium 4 processors
themselves, other chipset developers did their best to occupy this market niche. The
first company to enter the chipset market with its Pentium 4 solution supporting
DDR SDRAM appeared VIA. However, P4X266 can hardly be called a successful
solution.

Since VIA has been pretty stubborn about paying the license fees to Intel, they
failed to get the license for Pentium 4 chipsets production.

As a result, VIA P4X266 with its pretty attractive features and acceptable
performance is considered illegal. So, all the leading mainboard makers turned their
back on VIA P4X266 and the core logic never became popular.
 Later on VIA released the second revision of its P4X266 chipset in order to
attract more attention to it an to offer the customers better price-to-performance
ratio.

The newcomer was called P4X266A. The only difference between the two
chipsets was the enhanced DDR SDRAM controller of the “A” version, which made
the mainboards based on it run noticeably faster than the solutions on the older
P4X266. Unfortunately, the performance improvements hardly had any positive
effect on the popularity of VIA Pentium 4 chipsets.

However, VIA never lost hope. Very soon the company is going to start
shipping the new Pentium 4 P4X333 solution boasting a number of revolutionary
features.

Besides the support of Pentium 4 processors with 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus,
P4X333 will work with DDR333 memory, support AGP 8x, USB 2.0 and be equipped
with twice as fast V-Link bus between the chipset bridges with 533MB/sec
bandwidth.

Legal Competitor
The Pentium 4 DDR solution from SiS is absolutely legal: Intel granted SiS its license.

Besides, this chipset appeared the first one supporting DDR333 memory with
higher bandwidth than that of Pc2100 DDR SDRAM supported by other chipsets,
which is really important for Pentium 4.

As a result, the performance of SiS645 with DDR333 memory is very close to

that of i850.

And if we also take into consideration the relatively low cost of Sis’ solution,
there will remain no unanswered questions about the reasons for its success.

Really, SiS645 appeared one of the most successful chipsets for Pentium 4 in
the beginning of 2002.

Just like in case of VIA P4X266, SiS645 exists in two different revisions: A1
and A2.

Unfortunately, most mainboard makers do not mention what chipset revision

they use in their products, though their actual performance is slightly different.

The newer A2 revision is equipped with an optimized memory controller and

hence it works a bit faster.
 By the time Pentium 4 processors with 533MHz bus are due, SiS is going to
start the mass shipments of its SiS645DX solution supporting them. All other
specifications of SiS645DX are just the same as those of SiS645.

Also SiS has one more revolutionary core logic to come, which will support not
only the new Pentium 4 CPUs, but also AGP 8x, USB 2.0 IEEE1394 and ADSL.

(Diagram)

Genie of the PC
One of the least successful solutions so far is probably Ali Aladdin-P4. Although Ali
was among the first to obtain Intel’s license and the very first to announce its
offspring, there are not so many real mainboards based on Aladdin-P4.

We still hope the situation will improve for Ali: some mainboard makers
showcased their Ali Aladdin-P4 based products at the past CeBIT in Germany.

If these solution get into the mass market soon enough, they might be able to
become popular, because the features of Aladdin-P4 are really attractive.

We would like to point out that although at the chipset launch Ali promised the
support of DDR333 memory, the actual products based on Aladdin-P4 do not have it:
the DDR333 support is locked.

Hopefully, Ali will remember about their initial intention when they release the
next chipset versions.

And the launching of the new Aladdin-P4 chipset revision is really close
already.

The company is now working on a new M1671A South Bridge, which is

supposed to support DDR333 memory and Pentium 4 processor with faster 533MHz
bus.

Price Factor
The prices of an average motherboard along with 128 MB memory based on these
chipsets are given below. Prices as given as typically billed to end-users.

Chipsets 1850 1845 1845D VIA P4 SiS645 ALI

Price of 10,000 6,700 9,000 7,000 6,700 6,700
main board
plus 128 MB
memory *
* Prices as of April 22nd in Rupees

Conclusion
* i850. This chipset keeps pleasing us with unsurpassed performance in gaming and
professional applications due to high memory bandwidth. Moreover, the cost of
RDRAM doesn’t seem so crazy any more, especially against the background of the
DDR SDRAM prices.
Therefore, i850 is a good choice for today. Though you should always bear in
mind that once you decide on an i850 based mainboard, you will have no upgrade
options in the future and will simply throw the memory into the waste basket one
day.

* i845. This is an average product. Its only worthy advantage over the other DDR
competitors is the respected brand name.

* VIA P4X266A. This chipset can be regarded as the today’s fastes core logic with
DDR266 support.
However, VIA’s strategy regarding the license issue with Intel made it
impossible to find a brand name solution on P4X266A in the today’s market.

* SiS645. In case it works with DDR333, it definitely outpaces all DDR266 solutions.
It means that this chipset is the best choice for a high-performance system, if
you don’t care about the higher cost of DDR333 memory modules and only 1%
performance gain in most cases.
If you use this chipset with DDR266 memory, it will prove really great in
applications dealing with video- and audio encoding.

* Ali Aladdin-P4. This chipset didn’t impress us with its performance, unfortunately.

However, it is cheap and hence can surely find its niche in the market of
Pentium 4 DDR chipsets. In particular, if Ali repositions its Aladdin-P4 as a solution
for the upcoming Celeron (Willamette-128) processors, it will be in the right place.

Well, let’s wait for the month of May and for a new wave of competition in the
market of Pentium 4 chipsets.