Intel i820 Chipset Review

Business Application Performance - L2 Cache DISABLED

I also ran SYSmark98 under Win98 with the CPU's L2 cache disabled on each platform to make the systems performance more dependent on the main memory. Of course this introduces a performance hit, but it will also help us determine the benefit of the i820's increased memory bandwidth.

By disabling the L2 cache the i820 really shines. This shows that the i820 and its new RDRAM (Rambus) memory do indeed have a positive effect on the business application results. However, I was completely surprised that the VIA platform was only able to outperform the i440BX in one category, even with it's faster 133 MHz FSB.