Intel D845PESV (D845PESVL)

Our benchmarking spree features an i845PE-based mainboard from Intel itself. Of course, we shouldn't forget the fact that Intel makes its mainboards not for enthusiastic users, but first and foremost for OEM integrators. Nevertheless, the Intel mainboard is interesting as the one made by the chipset maker and thus may be considered as a reference product.

There are two DDR DIMM slots on the Intel mainboard. It's all right as more slots in i845PE-based mainboards would be useless in most cases.

D845PESV is equipped with six PCI slots. The layout also implies the implementation of a CNR slot, which is not there for some reason. So many slots pushed the AGP 4x slot too close to DIMM slots. As a result, we see the common problem: the installed graphics card blocks DIMM slot clips.

Intel D845PESV features a six-channel ADI AD1981B AC'97 codec. As we have said above, it is the best solution for today both in terms of characteristics and quality. The D845PESVL version of the mainboard comes with an integrated Intel DA82562ET network controller supporting Fast Ethernet.

Mainboard design is pretty successful. All the connectors are in their proper places, so that an Intel D845PESV based system will surely have good airflow inside the case.

The back panel of the mainboard has four USB 2.0 ports; another two are implemented as an onboard connector. The package doesn't include an additional USB module. Note also that there is only one COM port at the rear side of the case. This is the trade-off for the unified PCB design for both i845PE and i845GE.

The CPU voltage regulator is a two-phase one, hence the old power supply units are not supported. It means you have to use ATX 2.03 compatible power supply units.

As every other product from Intel, the D845PESV mainboard has no means for CPU overclocking. You can't modify any frequencies or voltages in D845PESV.

This mainboard offers options for memory configuration, though. BIOS Setup allows adjusting the memory frequency (DDR266/DDR333) and typical timings, such as: CAS Latency, RAS to CAS Delay, RAS Precharge Delay and Active to Precharge Delay. We should acknowledge that it is certainly great progress, as not so long ago Intel mainboards didn't allow adjusting any memory parameters and used SPD information for memory configuration.

It is also worth mentioning that the Intel D845PESV mainboard boasts some technology similar to ASUS Q-Fan. That is, when the CPU temperature gets below a certain value, the rotation speed of the CPU cooler is reduced or the fan may be stopped altogether.

Overall, Intel D845PESV (D845PESVL) is a high-quality product, but it's not targeted at systems of enthusiastic users.

MSI 845PE Max2

The reviewed mainboard from MSI is targeted at the demanding user. With the whole bunch of features and a lot of stuff inside the package, MSI 845PE Max2 enters the same product class as ASUS P4PE. The only thing missing is SerialATA support. But is it so necessary now that there are still no hard drives with this interface available?

The MSI 845PE Max2 mainboard, also known as MSI MS-6704, has the largest PCB of all our testing participants. This gigantic thing accommodated a lot of slots, additional controllers and connectors. For example, there are three DDR DIMM slots, although the third one can only be used under certain conditions. The mainboard is also equipped with six PCI slots, one AGP 4x slot and a CNR slot. In total, 845PE Max2 has more expansion slots onboard than any other mainboard of all considered here.

Among the integrated stuff, first of all we would like to point out Promise PDC20276 IDE RAID chip that supports two ATA/133 channels. You can connect up to four Parallel ATA hard disk drives via these channels and unite them into 0 (striping) and 1 (mirroring) RAID arrays. Note that this controller is rather outdated and doesn't support the SerialATA protocol.

To make up for it, 845PE Max2 supports the Firewire protocol. It's implemented via the integrated VIA VT6306 chip that supports three IEEE1394 ports. The 845PE Max2 package includes a module with all those ports. The module is installed into the back panel of the system case instead of an expansion card. It has two 10-pin and one 6-pin Firewire ports. Note that the use of VT6306 chip, instead of VT6307 as in ASUS P4PE, allows the MSI mainboard to support the maximum number of IEEE1394 ports.

USB 2.0 ports come next. By 845PE Max2 those are implemented solely by the chipset, so there are six USB ports in general. Four of them are laid out on the back panel of the mainboard, which is designed in the "new format". The remaining two ports are connected through a special back panel bracket.

The fully-fledged C-media CMI8738MX PCI sound controller, which supports six-channel sound and SPDIF, is responsible for the audio implementation on the mainboard. By the way, the SPDIF module is included into the mainboard package. We can't call this choice appropriate for today, though. Many AC'97 codecs offer similar functionality and no worse sound quality at a lower price.

As well as ASUS P4PE, MSI 845PE Max2 features a Gigabit Ethernet controller. But here we deal with an Intel 82540EM chip, not a Broadcom one.

The mainboard also boasts MSI's own D-Bracket technology. The USB module that comes with the mainboard has four dual-color LEDs that report the errors arising during the POST procedure.

The 845PE Max2 package may also include a Bluetooth set. The Bluetooth support may be employed at the expense of one USB port. By the way, the Bluetooth set from MSI includes a USB key that is installed into another computer to implement wireless network connection.

As for the PCB design, it is rather good thanks to the large size of the board. The only drawback we can find is that the RAID controller connectors are situated too close to the PCI slots. The engineers also managed to avoid the common problem of locating DIMM and AGP slots too close to one another. Only large graphics cards, like GeForce4 Ti, will block the DIMM slots clips. Meanwhile, the large size of the PCB may cause certain problems when installing the mainboard into certain PC cases. You should bear this in mind when choosing a case for your 845PE Max2.

Note also that the back panel of 845PE Max2 has only one COM port. It looks like 845 Max2 uses the same PCB design as the integrated i845GE solution.

The CPU voltage regulator is designed as a three-phase one. The transistors are equipped with heatsinks. This suggests a high output power of the regulator. The mainboard can work with old power supply units. So, 845PE Max2 has not only ATX 2.03, but also a usual 12V power supply connector. The mainboard can also work via one standard ATX cable.

Note that 845PE Max2 is the only mainboard included in this roundup, which features active chipset cooling. Moreover, the chipset fan has a rotation speed sensor monitored by the mainboard. Well, we really doubt the necessity of this as all other mainboards we tested were perfectly stable without the active cooling of the chipset North Bridge.

Now, a few words about overclocking. BIOS Setup allows modification of FSB and AGP/PCI frequencies as well as adjustment of basic voltages. The FSB clock-rate can be set equal to any value from 100MHz to 233MHz with 1MHz increment. The AGP/PCI frequency - from 64MHz to 81MHz with 0.6MHz increment. There is an option for CPU multiplier modification (for CPUs that allow such things). The Vcore can vary from 1.55V to 1.85V with 0.025V increment. Vagp may be set at 1.5V, 1.6V, 1.7V or 1.8V. Vdimm - at 2.5V, 2.6V, 2.7V or 2.8V.

Unfortunately, the mainboard only supports the standard divisors for the memory frequency so you can't use DDR355 SDRAM in 845PE Max2. To make up for this, the mainboards offers the opportunity to modify all key timings: CAS Latency, RAS to CAS Delay, RAS Precharge Delay and Active to Precharge Delay as well as Burst Length option.

If the mainboard refuses to start up after some tampering with CPU or memory settings, you need to use the Clear CMOS jumper as there is no other way to reset the BIOS settings.

Specifications Comparison

Testbed and Methods

The main objective of the today's roundup is to check the performance of the listed mainboards. The tests were carried out with the fastest CPU available now. It's Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz with Hyper-Threading technology support.

We used the following testbed:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPU;
• Mainboards: ABIT BE7, Albatron PX845PEV (PX845PEV Pro), ASUS P4PE, EPoX EP-4PEAE, Gigabyte 8PE667, Intel D845PESV, MSI 845PE Max2;
• 512MB PC2700 CL2 DDR SDRAM by Corsair;
• ATI RADEON 9700 Pro graphics card;
• Seagate Barracuda ATA IV, 80GB HDD.

All the mainboards were set to maximum performance by setting lowest timings (2-2-2-5 with 333MHz memory frequency). The benchmarks were run in Windows XP.

Note: as the EPoX EP-4PEAE mainboard wouldn't support Hyper-Threading technology, its results were considered only where the overall performance didn't depend on availability of this technology.

Performance

First thing we did was measuring the clock-rate of the CPU in every mainboard by means of the wcpuid utility. It's evident that the performance of the mainboard may greatly depend upon the real clock-rate CPU works at with it. Some manufacturers use this trick and artificially increase the effective FSB and, accordingly, CPU frequency. This test will help us to expose the sly-boots.

So, all the mainboards, except ASUS P4PE and Gigabyte 8PE667, have the FSB frequency close to the nominal. As for the remaining two, it's clear that these mainboards may show higher speed, but this would be not because of some intricate optimization, but due to simple overclocking. By the way, we should also mention that these two mainboards have not only higher bus frequency, but also increased CPU core voltage. By doing this, ASUS and Gigabyte probably wanted to make sure that their slightly overclocked products would work reliably.

Now, let's turn to the benchmarks. First we measured effective memory subsystem bandwidth of the mainboards. As usual, we used a recently released version of SiSoft Sandra 2003 benchmarking suite here.

As we see, the mainboards from ASUS and Gigabyte are best here. These are the mainboards that have an overclocked FSB frequency. Besides, Albatron PX845PEV performs well in this "fair competition". Well, the synthetic benchmark can hardly reflect the real performance of the mainboards, so let's get over to the tests, which emulate real-life applications.

The Business Winstone 2002 test measures time required to run a certain script. The script emulates user's work in such applications as Lotus Notes R5, Microsoft FrontPage 2002 SP-1, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Excel 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Access 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Word 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Project 2000, WinZip 8.0, Norton AntiVirus from Symantec and Netscape 6.2.1. The product from ABIT proved the best here. Funny, but the overclocked Gigabyte 8BE667 turned out not very fast here. Let us remind you that EPoX EP-4PEAE wasn't included into this test, as it has no Hyper-Threading technology support.

Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 is a test, which uses a script based upon the following applications: Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Adobe Premiere 6.0, Macromedia Director 8.5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055, Netscape 6.2.3, NewTek LightWave 7.5 and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 6.0. ASUS P4PE and Gigabyte 8PE667 are among the leaders. As we have learned above, they provide the highest memory subsystem bandwidth.

ASUS P4PE, ABIT BE7 and Intel D845PESV are best at video encoding.

The next benchmark we used was SPECviewperf 7.0. This test is good for comparing different platforms as its results greatly depend on the effective communication between the CPU and the memory.

We have already got used to ASUS P4PE being ahead of others :). The Albatron mainboard joins the leaders in this test.

Now let's see how our i845PE-based mainboards behave in games.

ASUS P4PE is again among the top ranks. Note also that EPoX EP-4PEAE, which wasn't included in the previous tests for the lack of Hyper-Threading technology support, shows good performance here. ABIT BE7 is also rather good, but let's recall that this mainboard has serious problems with stability when there are two or three DDR DIMM modules used in it.

PCMark 2002 results come last. Curiously enough, this is the only benchmark where the ASUS mainboard is not in the leading group.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, we have to state that many of the reviewed mainboards have significant drawbacks and we can't recommend purchasing them. It's clear that the products based on i845PE chipset are too "raw" yet as the chipset arrived not so long ago. It may be that most of the drawbacks will be eliminated in future mainboard revisions and newer versions of the BIOS. For now, the user has to choose among the limited number of mainboards we have got fewer criticisms to.

So, our tests single out the ASUS P4PE mainboard, which can be a good choice for an enthusiastic user. This product provides high performance, rich overclocking opportunities, high reliability and full range of features. The only serious problem about this mainboard is its high price.

The mainboard from Intel, D845PESV, also deserves mentioning. Although it doesn't offer any CPU overclocking options, it may be an optimal solution from other viewpoints. Intel D845PESV is very stable, pretty fast and not very expensive. That's why this mainboard may be recommended to OEM integrators and to users who don't care about overclocking.

As a kind of compromise between the hunt for overclocking opportunities and desire to get the best price, we can suggest Albatron PX845PEV. It's very low-cost, stable and provides nice options for memory and CPU overclocking. Of course, this mainboard can't boast record-breaking performance as well as knocking design, but it's really a leader in its price range.

We can't omit ABIT BE7, which demonstrated pretty good speed. But we also can't give it a positive score as it experiences serious problems with stability when more than one memory module is used.

To wind up this review, we would like to mention that one more option for Hyper-Threading platforms is coming besides i845PE and i845E. It's the solutions based on the Granite Bay chipset, and they will star in one of our upcoming reviews.