IWILL may become the world’s first company to bring a mainboard supporting next-generation Intel Xeon “Nocona” processors into the market. The manufacturer is reportedly planning a 2P Socket 604 mainboard based on the i875P core-logic initially designed for 1P high-performance systems.

This is not a surprise that Intel’s i875P “Canterwood” core-logic can handle two central processing units. A mainboard for two Intel Xeon processors powered by i875P has been officially supplied by ASUS for more than 6 months already and there were no reports about any faults with it. Though, Intel’s spec-sheets still do not confirm that the chipset originally developed for high-performance 1-way desktop personal computers actually supports two CPUs.

IWILL decided to deploy all capabilities i875P has. If ASUS’ PC-DL Deluxe declares support for 533MHz processor system bus and dual-channel PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory, IWILL’s DH800 sports all the features the chipset can provide, including 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and dual-channel PC3200 memory. This makes the DH800 the most-powerful solution for Intel Xeon processors up to date.  

Besides being extremely cost-effective, IWILL’s DH800 is also pretty flexible – it can serve as a base for workstations and servers, a pretty good advantage for a device of this kind. The mainboard features 2 64-bit/66MHz PCI-X slots for high-end add-in cards, such as SCSI controllers; AGP 8x/Pro110 slot for graphics cards, including professional solutions, such as 3Dlabs Wildcat, with AGP Pro connectors.

The whole list of DH800 capabilities looks as follows:

• Supports Socket 604 Intel Xeon processors with 533MHz and 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus;
• Supports Intel Hyper-Threading and PAT technologies;
• i875P chipset, including Canterwood MCH and ICH-S (Hance Rapids) 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;
• 2 32-bit/33MHz PCI slots, 2 64-bit/66MHz slots, and 1 AGP 8x/Pro110 slot;
• 2-channel ATA-100/66/33 integrated controller;
• Serial ATA-150 ports;
• Adaptec HOST RAID to support RAID 1;
• USB 2.0 ports;
• FireWire (IEEE1394) support;
• 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet adapter from Intel via CSA bus;
• 6-channel audio solution;
• E-ATX Form Factor.

What is not really important for the majority of Intel Xeon users, but may be interesting for PC enthusiasts is that IWILL’s DH800 supports overclocking beyond 800MHz PSB and 400MHz memory, including asynchronous CPU and RAM overclocking, a capability not available on other Socket 604 mainboards.

First Intel Xeon processors code-named Nocona with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and 1MB of L2 cache will show up in the Q2 2004.

Pricing and availability of DH800 are to be announced.