When it comes to system performance, one of the most crucial aspects is the chipset. These processors coordinate traffic between the main CPU, memory and peripheral devices like your video and sound card. Intel has always been the chipset performance leader for their own Pentium processors, as other chipset vendors either lacked performance or were plagued with bugs.
nVidia, primarily known for their video chips, pioneered new technologies into their nForce chipset, which was exclusively made for AMD’s Athlon processors. Intel countered by introducing a dual-channel memory controller for Pentium 4 processors, which now achieve over 5 gigabytes a second of memory bandwidth!
Now another well-known graphics card maker is making motherboard chipsets, this time it’s ATI with their RX330 chipset for Socket 478 (Pentium 4) processors. The board features 4 DIMM slots for memory, and are dual-channel, an AGP 8x slot, 5 PCI slots, and a Realtek 100Mbit Ethernet controller. Serial ATA-150 support is provided by ATI’s own SB300 I/O controller. The new RX330 offers no integrated graphics core as one might anticipate, as do some nForce motherboards.
Board Features | |
---|---|
CPU | Socket 478 |
FSB | 800/533/400 |
Chipset | ATI RX330 |
Memory | DDR 400/333/266 |
Memory socket | 4x DDR |
Max memory | 4 GB |
Graphics interface | AGP 8x/4x |
PCI slots | 5 |
Raid function | Yes |
LAN | Realtek 8100C |
Audio | Realtek AC97 (ALC655) |
IDE | 2x Serial ATA, 2x ATA133 |
USB 2.0 | 8 (4 on MB, 4 by extension) |
Serial ATA | 2x ATA-150 ports |
Parallel port | 1x parallel port |
serial port | 1x RS-232 serial port |
audio ports | 3x configurable analog jacks 1x SPDIF jack by cable front audio connector pins |
fan headers | 2x fan headers |
Size | 30.5 x 24.4 cm |
Gigabyte is the first manufacturer maker to provide a mainboard based on ATI chipsets. This chipset is targeted to compete directly at Intel’s 865PE chipset, and offers similar features to its rival: hyper-threading technology, dual-channel DDR400, 800MHz FSB, 8x AGP and USB 2.0. Let’s take her out for a test drive…
RX330 chipset features | |
---|---|
Up to 800 MHz CPU FSB for Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor | |
Supports Intel® Hyper-Threading™ processors | |
In-Order Queue (IOQ) depth of 12 | |
Supports Dynamic Bus Inversion (DBI) | |
Supports system bus interrupt delivery | |
Integrated master clock generator with spread spectrum support | |
AGP 3.0 compliant AGP 8X interface with Fast Write support | |
266MB/second point-to-point interface to ATI IXP in A-Link mode | |
Dual channel 128-bit DDR SDRAM memory interface | |
DDR400 SDRAM support provides up to 6.4 GB/second bandwidth | |
Up to 4 GB DRAM support with two unbuffered DIMMs | |
Up to 8 USB2.0 ports | |
Up to 2 SATA ports | |
Two independent IDE channels with support of mode 0 to 4, and ATA 100 | |
Supports LPC based Super I/O | |
Integrated Ethernet controller | |
Support for Microsoft Windows® XP, Windows® 2000 and Linux |