VIA Teams Up Pentium 4 With DDR-Memory

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Pentium 4 Chipsets

So far only one platform has been available for Pentium 4, Intel's 850 RDRAM chipset. Now VIA is starting to ship its P4X266 and in a few weeks Intel will release the first 'step' of the i845 chipset. We made a little comparison table to give you an overlook of the different features.

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ChipsetVIA P4X266Intel 845Intel 850
LaunchAugust 2001September 2001November 2000
CPU-PlatformSockel 423/478Sockel 423/478Sockel 423/478
Supported ProcessorsIntel Pentium 4Intel Pentium 4Intel Pentium 4
SMP-SupportNoNoYes
Chipset NorthbridgeVIA VT8753Intel 82845Intel 82850
Chipset SouthbridgeVIA VT8233Intel 82801 BAIntel 82801 BA
Front Side Bus Clock100 MHz (quad pumped)100 MHz (quad pumped)100 MHz (quad pumped)
Memory Clock100/133 MHz SDR/DDR100/133 MHz SDR/DDR400 MHz
asynchronuous Memory ClockYesNoNo
FSB-Overclocking*up to 200 MHzup to 180 MHzup to 133 MHz
max. number of memory-Slots444
max. amount of Memory4096 MB2048 MB2048 MB
SDRAM SupportYesYesNo
DDR-SDRAM SupportYesYes, but not supported until Q1/2002No
VC-SDRAM SupportYesNoNo
RDRAM SupportNoNoYes
Dual Channel RDRAM SupportNoNoYes
Max. Memory Bandwidth2133 MB/s1066 MB/s for the time being3200 MB/s
Ultra-ATA/33/66/100Yes/Yes/YesYes/Yes/YesYes/Yes/Yes
Number of USB Ports664
USB 2.0NoYesNo
max. number of PCI-Slots566
integrated GraphicsNoNoNo
AGP 1x / 2x / 4xYes / Yes / YesYes / Yes / YesYes / Yes / Yes
ACPI-FeaturesYesYesYes

* depending on clock generator chip

We know that i850 is an RDRAM-only solution, which makes it expensive. Its dual-channel Rambus architecture however allows a memory bandwidth of up to 3200 MB/s, which is identical to Pentium 4's processor bus bandwidth.

Thomas Pabst