Introduction
Last month, Intel introduced the new platform generation for DDR2 memory, PCI Express and the new LGA 775 socket. Technologically, this generation breaks with everything that has been seen before. The new chipsets are superior to all competing products on the market feature-wise. The question is, however, do we need all that right now?
For many users the answer comes quickly, as high-quality DDR400 DIMMs and/or a graphics card of the type ATI Radeon 9800 or NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900 series have countless users today to call their own. Current software has thus far scarcely required anything more, excepting Far Cry of course.
Besides a new motherboard including processor and cooler, changing over to the Socket 775 means you have to have new DDR2 DIMMs and a PCI Express graphics card. In order to use the features of the new Southbridge then, it would be also good to have a hard drive with command queuing support. Or two even, in the so-called Matrix RAID. But who wants to spend all that money when, as things stand today, the benefits can hardly be noticed, much less measured?
We wanted to know what the current generation of motherboards for Socket 478 can do. A total of 16 manufacturers sent us their latest models based on the 865PE and 875P Intel chipsets.
