Intel may be furious with MSI, Albatron and now EPoX about starting to sell their i865PE and i865P-based mainboards before the official Springdale launch on the 21^st of May, but it cannot stop the companies and their distributors now. During the weekend, mainboards powered by Springdale core-logic sets from EPoX and MSI started to appear in Japanese retail stores, Akiba PC Hotline reported. Basically speaking, this time Japan is a bit behind the whole world, as some i865P and i865PE mainboards appeared for sale in the USA and Russia more than a week ago.

Since Intel wants to rapidly transfer to the Springdale platform, it had to cease supplying sufficient quantity of its i845-series and start delivering i865P and i865PE solutions; because mainboard companies had nothing to sell after getting rid of Brookdale platform, they began to supply their i865-based products to distributors. The latter, resellers as well retailers definitely understand that Intel’s 865PE and 865P are really tasty for end-users now and began to offer the mainboards to end-users. In fact, this move can stimulate demand for mainstream and high-end Pentium 4 processors with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, hence, everybody should now be happy.

As always in Japan, the novelties are much overpriced. For instance, MSI’s 865PE Neo2-LS (you can learn its features and peculiarities in this news-story) costs roughly $140, while EPoX EP-4PDA2+ based on i865PE and with Gigabit Ethernet, Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133, Serial ATA-150, FireWire, USB 2.0 and other necessary things costs already more than $160.

Looks like we should expect massive availability of i865PE/P-based mainboards long before the 21^st of May, when the chipset will be released officially.