Karbosguide.com - Module 2d.13b

Intel i815E "Solano", continued ...

The contents:

  • Asynchronous FSB
  • A conclusion
  • Next chip set: "Almador"
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    • The Asynchronous FSB

    A nice new detail in the i815E chip set is that the clocks of the FSB and the RAM can operate independently.

    This way you can use PC133 RAM together with a Celeron with its mere 66 MHz bus:

    You may also reuse old PC100 RAM for a while before updating it to PC133 RAM.

    Overclocking

    We do not overclock our PCs anymore in this company. However, looking at the asynchronity of FSB and RAM, it brings into one's mind, that this must be very fancy for overclocking.

    With a i815-based motherboard, you can heat up the FSB without any impact on RAM (or PCI) speed. With proper cooling I am pretty sure that a socketed Pentium III-933 CPU will function at 1.05 GHz:

    A conclusion

    From the details described here, we firmly believe that Intel is on the right track with the i815 chip set.

    The BX set is worn out, and details like ATA/100 and asynchronous FSB/RAM will be very much appreciated!

    It appears that Intel have to do a revision of the graphics drivers. In the first version, no monitor would work at higher refresh rate than 60 Hz, if the monitor did not have its driver installed in Windows ! This is completely nuts. Often a monitor works fine with the standard Super VGA driver within Windows .

    PC133 RAM is a good product at the time, and the first tests show that i815 with SDRAM performs better than i820 with RDRAM!

    We strongly hope that Intel will redirect their strategy into using DDR in a future revision of this chip set (be it code name "Almador" or what ever).

    The "Almador" set

    The successor to i815 is codenamed "Almador" (maybe i817?). The intersting issue is that Intel has announced support for SDRAM.

    Using DDR RAM, Intel will have a very powerfull platform for Pentium III. Also the integrated 3D graphics engine will benefit from the better RAM bandwidth.

    The south bridge of this set will be the new ICH3 chip with these features:

  • ATA/100
  • Six USB ports of version 2.0
  • Integrated LAN etc. like the ICH2 of i815.

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    Learn more

    Read about the Pentium in module 3c

    Read about the Pentium II's etc. in module 3e

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