Product Reviews

Intel's original 845 chipset was an admission of defeat. It realised there was no way regular consumers were going to pay over the odds for RDRAM, and this was scuppering its chances of making the Pentium 4 a mass-market CPU. The original 845 chipset was limited to using PC133 SDRAM and performance was less than exciting. Finally, after a long wait, the 845D chipset appeared. This used the same south bridge as the original, but for the first time gave official Intel support for DDR SDRAM.

Now, a few months later, a new group of 845 chipsets are available from Intel. The latest evolution is the 845E, supporting the newest 533MHz FSB (front side bus) chips. There are also a couple with integrated graphics, the 845G and its brother the 845GL, which are due shortly.

One major advantage of the 845E chipset is that it includes the new ICH4 south bridge. As well as support for the standard six PCI slots and dual UltraDMA/100 EIDE controllers, it includes several enhancements from the older design. USB 2 is perhaps the most useful, with more new devices supporting this interface. However, there's also a LAN interface and true six-channel audio, although these need to be supported by a secondary chip on the motherboard as well.

The primary reason for the new chipset is support for Intel's latest breed of Pentium 4 CPUs. These are based on the Northwood architecture, but run with a FSB of 133MHz - or 533MHz when the quad clock is taken into account. Intel has told us that even if the previous 845D motherboards will overclock to this rate, the new chips won't work, so once again Intel is forcing a motherboard upgrade after only a few months of stability.

To give a broad idea of how the new chipset stacks up, we tested three of the latest 845E boards from AOpen, Gigabyte and MSI. To test the boards, we added a 2.4AGHz Pentium 4 with a 533MHz FSB, a 40Gb UltraATA/100 Seagate Barracuda ATA IV hard disk, 256Mb of Micron PC2100 RAM, a 32Mb Matrox G450 graphics card and installed Microsoft Windows XP Professional.

The AOpen AX4B-533N is the most basic. It includes 10/100BaseTX networking (although it's available without), thanks to a Realtek RTL8100BL chip, and an Avance Logic ALC650 handles the audio codec. As well as the six PCI slots called for by Intel's specification, a CNR slot sits at the bottom of the board, as on the other two boards. Complementing the two UltraDMA/100 EIDE channels is a Promise PDC20275, adding UltraDMA/133 support on another two channels, although this doesn't support any form of RAID.

Although headers for four extra USB 2 ports are on the motherboard, there are only two more ports on the supplied bracket,

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leaving it lagging behind the other boards. A passive heatsink on the north bridge helps keep the sound level down, although how much difference this will make in the average four-fan PC is debatable. Seven 3,300mF and two 2,200mF capacitors take care of power-regulation duties, and the two power connectors are kept sensibly close together between the CPU socket and the backplane connectors. Two 80-conductor EIDE cables are supplied along with a floppy cable. Software is limited to the drivers, various monitoring utilities and Norton AntiVirus 2002.

Gigabyte is the only manufacturer of the three not to have put all its eggs in the USB 2 basket. Although it supports USB 2, the GA-8IEXP includes headers for three IEEE-1394 ports available on an optional bracket. This is in addition to four USB 2 ports on another bracket and a third containing S/PDIF connectors. If all these plates were fitted, only three PCI slots would be usable. A Creative CT 5880 chip controls sound, while a SigmaTel STA9708T handles 10/100BaseTX networking. There are two additional EIDE connectors controlled by a Promise PDC20276 chip, although, unlike the AOpen, the Gigabyte board supports RAID-0 and -1. One problem is that the two power connectors required for Pentium 4 systems are split up on opposite sides of the board, making cable routing awkward. Software is almost non-existent, with only drivers and an overclocking utility worthy of note.

MSI's 845E Max2-BLR is the most interesting of the three boards tested. As well as 10/100BaseTX networking, which is featured on all three boards, the MSI features another networking technology. Although an emerging standard, Bluetooth is likely to become more prevalent over the next year, and MSI is the first to integrate this into a desktop motherboard. A small transceiver module is connected to header pins on the board, making one PCI slot unusable. Not only does this limit the PCI slots available, but also renders one of the USB 2 ports unavailable, although this is clearly stated in the manual and on a sticker on the USB 2 port in question. A USB Bluetooth module is also included for connection to any other PC, allowing wireless networking up to a point.

The board also comes with an optional DLED bracket that allows easy deciphering of POST problems and provides two USB 2 ports. A second USB 2 bracket - with one blanked off for Bluetooth - and MSI S bracket were also supplied, although these are also optional extras. The latter allows six-channel audio without loss of microphone and line inputs and also sports coaxial and optical digital outs. Other features include two additional EIDE connectors controlled by a Promise PDC20276, which allows RAID-0 and -1 using the UltraDMA/133 interface. Like Gigabyte, MSI also splits the power connectors on opposing sides of the board.

In our benchmarks, all three boards displayed virtually identical performance overall, with only 1.5 per cent separating them. Database and media creation tests offered the most difference, with the Gigabyte slowest in the former but faster in the latter. Of the three boards tested, the MSI and Gigabyte offer the better feature sets. If you don't want built-in IEEE-1394, choose the MSI, as it offers the most for your money.