X-bit labs

February 2004 Hardware News Overview (page 4)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 02/23/2004 | 06:37 PM ]

Mainboards

With all its uncertainty, the Prescott processor was in the focus of the previous section. Let’s continue in this manner. Well, there has been no revolution here in mainboards: manufacturers were all announcing slightly redesigned versions of their older products. An updated BIOS plus enforced power circuitry usually do the trick. If the old product already boasts a strong power unit, they just declare it supports Prescott. The second way is rather more economical, but the point remains the same.

First incarnations of the core will plug into Socket 478 mainboards on different chipsets: the duo from VIA and SiS, the PT880 and 655TX, respectively, try to compete with the i865PE (and even i875P) with some success. The chipset from SiS looks more appealing, but they both are cheaper than Intel’s chips. You can already find mainboards on these two chipsets in stores.

This is what we have now, in other words, what is going to become our past pretty soon. Those who are looking ahead see a new generation of chipsets on the horizon. It is as uncertain as the Prescott, frankly speaking. DDR2 is unlikely to provide a perceptible performance boost over ordinary DDR: it will be more like a statistical error in many benchmarks. The PCI Express bus would be more interesting for the end-user, but it is not going to show its full potential in this year, considering the attitude of the card makers.

However, these reflections shrivel before the flourish of trumpets from the marketing departments of the chipset makers: Grantsdale and Alderwood come out this spring. We should learn their official denominations: i915 and i925, with some derivatives. Some sources say that the i925 will come with a letter “X” rather than “P”, while the i915 will come in three versions:  P, G and GV. The last version, GL, is supposed to come out as 910GL. To all probability, i915GV and i910GL will appear in the second half of the year only, just like it was with the 865 series.

The direct rival of the i915P from VIA, the PT890 chipset, should come out around that time, too. At least, engineering samples’ shipments should have been started in the end of January. So, very soon there should be mainboards on this chipset already and they will come into the market no later than i915P-based products. This is the direct outcome of the reconciliation with Intel, which has started bringing fruit. SiS is somewhat tardy: samples of its SiS656 go to mainboard makers in February, while its production will start in April only.

Mainboards on integrated chipsets won’t bring us anything new in the near future. Only the RADEON 9100 IGP, which has been around for a while, has been steadily gaining its ground. In January, two mainboards on this chipset appeared in shops (Gigabyte GA-8TRS300M and ASUS P4R800-V Deluxe), and the RS3M from MSI was announced. Interestingly, the mainboard from ASUS claims official support of the Prescott.