We find out in the latest Intel 845D article here that it is not, indeed, the fastest or most glamorously decorated chipset on the market.
So what? And, what did you expect?
I've used Intel, AMD and Cyrix chips and Intel, VIA, SiS and other various chipsets. Of all of these, the Intel/Intel combos are the ONLY boards that are still in use today. My 486SX/25 still runs, as does my 486DX2/66. My Cyrix/VIA 200+ is dead. The AMD 386 my dad bought YEARS ago is dead. And my AMD-loving friend has gone through more motherboards than girlfriends.
The simple matter of fact is, I, like a lot of people, am not quite so concerned with which board offers +1 to 3 fps over some other board, and which has ATA133 (I use SCSI, which has been at 160 for quite some time now -- and even that is a moot point until you start stacking drives in striped RAID arrays). To me, a board that boots flawlessly the first, and every single time afterwards, with no driver issues, no compatibility problems, little heat and power issues, and no concerns with which PCI card is in which slot will take the cake ANY day over which board is the hottest thing on the market.
Intel isn't perfect, as noted by all the problems with the P4 when it first arrived. But they learned, got their #$^@ together and made it a stable, kick-ass CPU that could crunch numbers quickly, without heating your entire house or catching on fire should the CPU fan fall off. Then there's the chipset issues... where they're "stupid" for not releasing a DDR chipset before. Hey, you guys whined about it enough that they did what they could, when they could. What were they supposed to do, break the licensing agreements and get themselves sued? Seems to me that Rambus might not have been such a doomed innovation anyway, since it's now the benchmark to beat with DDR coming only marginally close. But then.. no matter what they do, they're still the bad guys, right? Not that Rambus deserved much sympathy -- afterall, they were kind of shady.
Back to the point... maybe your opinions differ, and you've definitely the right to feel that way. But every time Intel comes out with some improvement, you belittle it. If they make a mistake, you pound them mercilessly into the ground for years. I'm surprised still that you've even now let them live down the Pentium divide error. Now, when AMD eeks by with a half-second improvement over the fastest Intel CPU, you pass out party hats and noisemakers, and AMDs little quirks (like the P-rating) are merely cute and understandable. So if you insist on sneering at Intel and joining the little Pro-Indie elitist clubs, then why don't you just do us all a favor and ignore Intel completely? You're hardly unbiased and useful with the reviews, so just shut up and write your We Love AMD propoganda already.
One last thing -- you mention MSI as the only board that clocks their 100MHz FSB at exactly 100MHz, and the rest are "cheating" by upping the clock a bit. Um -- how exactly is tweaking the board classified as "cheating"? I thought overclocking was a GOOD thing, and the "mine is faster than yours" mentality that this site sponsors seems to make it so that any improvement would be welcomed... It doesn't quite make sense. Make a new chipset that can rush electrons a bit quicker and that's good; just up the clock a tad and that's bad. Okay, whatever guys..
Have an underground anti-corporate Xmas, folks...
-SN
So what? And, what did you expect?
I've used Intel, AMD and Cyrix chips and Intel, VIA, SiS and other various chipsets. Of all of these, the Intel/Intel combos are the ONLY boards that are still in use today. My 486SX/25 still runs, as does my 486DX2/66. My Cyrix/VIA 200+ is dead. The AMD 386 my dad bought YEARS ago is dead. And my AMD-loving friend has gone through more motherboards than girlfriends.
The simple matter of fact is, I, like a lot of people, am not quite so concerned with which board offers +1 to 3 fps over some other board, and which has ATA133 (I use SCSI, which has been at 160 for quite some time now -- and even that is a moot point until you start stacking drives in striped RAID arrays). To me, a board that boots flawlessly the first, and every single time afterwards, with no driver issues, no compatibility problems, little heat and power issues, and no concerns with which PCI card is in which slot will take the cake ANY day over which board is the hottest thing on the market.
Intel isn't perfect, as noted by all the problems with the P4 when it first arrived. But they learned, got their #$^@ together and made it a stable, kick-ass CPU that could crunch numbers quickly, without heating your entire house or catching on fire should the CPU fan fall off. Then there's the chipset issues... where they're "stupid" for not releasing a DDR chipset before. Hey, you guys whined about it enough that they did what they could, when they could. What were they supposed to do, break the licensing agreements and get themselves sued? Seems to me that Rambus might not have been such a doomed innovation anyway, since it's now the benchmark to beat with DDR coming only marginally close. But then.. no matter what they do, they're still the bad guys, right? Not that Rambus deserved much sympathy -- afterall, they were kind of shady.
Back to the point... maybe your opinions differ, and you've definitely the right to feel that way. But every time Intel comes out with some improvement, you belittle it. If they make a mistake, you pound them mercilessly into the ground for years. I'm surprised still that you've even now let them live down the Pentium divide error. Now, when AMD eeks by with a half-second improvement over the fastest Intel CPU, you pass out party hats and noisemakers, and AMDs little quirks (like the P-rating) are merely cute and understandable. So if you insist on sneering at Intel and joining the little Pro-Indie elitist clubs, then why don't you just do us all a favor and ignore Intel completely? You're hardly unbiased and useful with the reviews, so just shut up and write your We Love AMD propoganda already.
One last thing -- you mention MSI as the only board that clocks their 100MHz FSB at exactly 100MHz, and the rest are "cheating" by upping the clock a bit. Um -- how exactly is tweaking the board classified as "cheating"? I thought overclocking was a GOOD thing, and the "mine is faster than yours" mentality that this site sponsors seems to make it so that any improvement would be welcomed... It doesn't quite make sense. Make a new chipset that can rush electrons a bit quicker and that's good; just up the clock a tad and that's bad. Okay, whatever guys..
Have an underground anti-corporate Xmas, folks...
-SN
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