News Gigabyte 8INXP :: D-D

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"For the year 2002, we have tested a lot of motherboards for Intel processors. In each review, I lamented over the low memory bandwidth that prohibits demonstration of the advantages the Pentium4 architecture brings. Each member of the i845 (D/E/PE) chipset line has one bottleneck - the memory controller. The memory controller itself is well done, but is not perfect in the functionality. The maximum what the i845PE (the best of the i845xx) can give is to provide memory operation at frequencies no more than 4/5 of the system bus frequency. In other words, using the DDR333 (166MHz = 133/4*5) gives the 2.7 GB/s bandwidth, which is much lower than that of the processor bus which is as high as 4.2 GB/s (for FSB=133MHz). Some motherboards allow using the 3/4 divisor, which allows setting the memory to the 177MHz frequency (e.g., Asus P4PE or Abit BE7). Performance boost is anyway there, but that doesn't change the situation."

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