Intel Corporation confirmed today that its current mainboards will not support certain future processors by announcing design changes for its D875PBZ, D865GBF, D865GLC products. The first mainboards from Intel with support for Prescott processor will come next month.
The strangest fact is that Intel seems to had known the possible problems with Prescott support long ago, on the stage of its mainboard product design late last year!
Basically, the changes imply enhancement of the CPU VREG for future processor support. The enhancement involves load line changes for future processors, new (G)MCH VTT support as well as support for dual load lines (needed for 4-phase power that is available on some mainboards). Additionally, Intel will provide new BIOS versions for the new mainboards.
The full list of changes is available in this document at Intel’s web-site. Pay attention to the fact that Intel does not add anything new to the PCB design or layout, but only changes some elements. The PCB layout of Intel’s mainboards was developed in order to provide more current for the processor and support CPUs with enhanced power requirements. The reason why Intel decided not to utilize the design that supports Prescott chips for sure from the beginning remains unclear, but obviously in order to save some $3-$5.
There are hopes that some mainboard makers were not saving a couple of dollars on components and some current mainboards will support Prescott processors for sure.
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Discussion started: 08/15/03 04:32:54 AM
Latest comment: 09/21/03 05:38:55 AM
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I'll never buy intel mobo again. Recently i bought 875PBZ + P4 2.4C - its rather stable but sometimes computer cant start, it has no IAA support for non-raid configurations and its disk performance is VERY poor. It cant recognize correctly memory timings of my kingston hyperx. I found disk performance is slower than my old Abit BE6-2 w P3 533 when dealing with SQL Server !!! My friend had similar configuration, Intel flash program broke his bios and even recovery didnt help. I strongly recommend to avoid Intel boards, they have very poor support and quality is not close to what was before.
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Posted by: Milo Minderbinder
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Date: 08/15/03 04:32:54 AM]
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I also have a 875PBZ with 2x kingston hyperX. Problems same as yours - sometimes during boot everything calms down and monitor shuts off. I even had it replaced, but the problems remained the same. Thougt it was a power supply... But the disk performance is ok as it was with 845PESV before :)
What about stability, it's just fine. Burn in mode +4% also is stable, but no S3 standby then :)
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Posted by: prAnza
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Date: 09/21/03 05:38:55 AM]
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The new Intel boards don't need IAA. If you have XP SP1 the HD performance is actually a bit faster with just Microsoft's default IDE drivers. I just tested an 875PBZ yesterday and with a Barracuda 7200.7 drive it scored a fairly high HDD score in PCMark 2002. 900+.
In my experience Intel boards are very reliable, but not without fault. Having the latest Bios is important. But they do have a 3 year warranty usually.
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Posted by: The Jedi
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Date: 08/15/03 05:17:33 AM]
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