Intel Rigs Up: P4 Series with FSB800

Intel 865PE (Springdale): The Better Choice?

The Intel 865 chipset is something of an enigma for the well-informed user. Both the 875P and the 865PE chipsets support dual DDR 400 and FSB 800 for the Pentium 4. A glance at the latest price list shows the 875P (Canterwood) priced at $53 ($50 without RAID option) - $16 more expensive overall than the comparable Intel 865PE. For your money, you'd get the dubious benefit of PAT technology, together with ECC memory support.

Just for your information: THG did not notice any difference in the performance of the Asus P4C800 with the 875P chipset and the Asus P4P800 with the 865PE. The benchmark results did in fact show that the 865 board is marginally slower than the 875 version. The reason: the latter runs with an FSB of 202 MHz, while the 865P runs at 200 MHz.

The Intel 865 offers lots of choices. There are six versions in total: the 865G with integrated graphics, the 865PE for FSB 800 without the graphics, and the 865P without graphics and FSB 400/ 533. All three versions can be specified with an integrated Serial-ATA-RAID controller in the ICH5 Southbridge, making a total of six chipset options. Intel normally offers these chipset only as combinations of North- and Southbridge.