Without a lot of hype IWILL started to deliver its DH800 mainboard powered by Intel 875P chipset, the first platform to officially support next-generation Xeon processors for 2-way applications.

Akiba PC Hotline reports that IWILL DH800 mainboard that was first described at X-bit labs in early February is now available in Tokyo, Japan for the price of approximately $375, which is not a high price for a mainboard engineered for 2P servers and workstations. Affordable cost of IWILL DH800 is a result of using i875P (E7210) core-logic for high-end desktops that does not officially support either SMP configurations or Nocona processors.

For the new Intel Xeon DP-based applications Intel is preparing E7710 (Lindenhurst), E7510 (Lindenhurst VS) and E7515 (Tumwater) chipsets. Those core-logic products are expected to support 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, dual-channel PC2700 DDR and PC2-3200 DDR2 SDRAM memory with ECC support. Besides, the E7710 will bring PCI Express x8 as well as PCI Express x4 into server solutions in addition to direct connect LAN and storage components, while E7515 will sport PCI Express x16 lane for new breeds of workstation graphics cards.

Even though the new chipsets bring PCI Express and DDR2 (DDR-II), those innovations will be pretty expensive for end-users. Sources anticipate E7710 to cost $84, E7510 to be quoted at $70 and E7515 to be priced at astonishing $100. In contrast, E7210 costs system makers some $44 now, much lower compared to the prices on current chipsets for Xeon processors.

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/E7210 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.

Given that DDR2 memory at 400MHz speed brings no evident performance benefits and may even appear to be slower than DDR memory at 400MHz, the IWILL DH800 may end up as the fastest solution for Xeon “Nocona” processors suitable for servers or workstations.

First Intel Xeon processors code-named Nocona with EM64T technology, 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and 1MB of L2 cache will show up in the Q2 2004. It it not clear whether IWILL DH800 is able to make use of the new Xeon 64-bit capabilities.