Earlier this year we reported about code-named Intel Canterwood-ES chipset for entry-level rack-servers designed for Intel Pentium 4 processors with up to 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and coming with special ICH5S I/O controller with support for 64-bit PCI slots (see our March 19, 2003 news-story). Well, that is not all with Canterwood for servers and workstations: it looks like Intel has decided to re-tailor its plans a bit and now Canterwood seems to support dual Xeon processors with 533MHz QPB.

Apparently, as X86-secret reports, ASUS is nearly ready to ship its PC-DL Deluxe mainboard based on i875P and supporting Socket 604 Xeon processors with clock-speeds up to 3.06GHz and above. Furthermore, the mainboard does not have any 64-bit PCI slots and other server-only components, and probably is a mainboard for workstations and not for servers, even though you still need to have a special E-ATX PSU in order to feed the hungry Xeon processors with enough power.

Take a look on the specifications of the mainboard:

• Supports Socket 604 Intel Xeon processors with 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus with up to 3.60GHz clock-speed and above;
• Supports Intel Hyper-Threading and PAT technologies;
• i875P chipset, including Canterwood MCH and ICH5R I/O controller;
• 4 DIMM slots for up to 4GB of PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory. Dual-channel memory bus support: the memory modules should be identical and installed in pairs;
• 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP Pro 8x slot;
• 2-channel ATA-100/66/33 integrated controller;
• Serial ATA-150/ATA-133 RAID controller from Promise, supporting one Serial ATA port and one ATA-133 port.
• ICH5R apparently supports 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID.
• Up to 8 USB 2.0 ports;
• FireWire (IEEE1394) support;
• 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet adapter from Intel via CSA bus;
• 6-channel audio solution;
• ATX Form Factor.

According to ASUS’ web-site here, the MCH of the PC-DL Deluxe mainboard is typical 82875P, the Canterwood. In case the MCH on the PC-DL mainboard is indicated correctly, it means that every i875P supports SMP, a feature that was not even indicated by Intel in its i875P data-sheet.

A nice feature that us not reported in documents, isn’t it? Well, remember that i875P with ICH5R costs slightly above $50, well lower compared to chipsets that support SMP; such price will definitely allow Intel partners to build relatively low-cost 2-way systems. Is it yet another element in Intel Xeon fight against AMD Opteron?