Turbo Drive: Two Dual Boards with 2000 MHz

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Intel 815E Or VIA 694XDP?

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Chipset	Intel 815E	VIA Apollo Pro 133A	Intel 820	Intel 840	Intel 440BX	Intel 440GX
Release	June 2000	November 1999	November 1999	October 1999	April 1998	June 1998
CPU platform	Socket 370	Slot 1/Socket 370	Slot 1/Socket 370	Slot 1	Slot 1/Socket 370	Slot 1/Slot 2
Multiprocessor support	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Northbridge	Intel 82815	VIA VT82C694XDP	Intel 82820	Intel 82840	Intel 82443	Intel 82446
Southbridge	Intel 82801BA	VIA VT82C686B	Intel 82801AA	Intel 82801AA	Intel 82371EB	Intel 82371EB
System bus clock (FSB)	66/100/133 MHz	66/100/133 MHz	66**/100/133 MHz	100/133 MHz	66/100/133* MHz	66/100 MHz
Memory clock	66/100/133 MHz	66/100/133 MHz	66**/100/133 MHz	100/133 MHz	66/100/133 MHz	66/100 MHz
Asynchronous memory clock	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
33 MHz PCI @ 133 MHz FSB	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no
FSB Overclocking***	up to 166 MHz	up to 160 MHz	up to 155 MHz	no	up to 155 MHz	no
max. number of DIMM or RIMM slots	3	4	2	4	4	4
max. Memory	512 MB	1536 MB	1024 MB	2048 MB	1024 MB	2048 MB
VC-SDRAM support	no	yes	no	no	no	no
DDR-SDRAM support	no	no	no	no	no	no
RIMM support (Rambus)	no	no	yes	yes	no	no
Dual Rambus support	no	no	no	yes	no	no
UltraATA/33/66/100	yes/yes/yes	yes/yes/yes	yes/yes/no	yes/yes/no	yes/no/no	yes/no/no
Number of USB ports	4	4	2	2	2	2
Number of IRQs for PCI slots	6	5	6	6	4	4
Integrated graphics core	yes	no	no	no	no	no
AGP 1x / 2x / 4x	yes / yes / yes	yes / yes / yes	yes / yes / yes	yes / yes / yes	yes / yes / no	yes / yes / no
ACPI features	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes

The table above lists the features of the most important chipsets offering multi-processor support. The latest candidate is the Intel 815E which, initially, was not designed for use as a dual platform. Rather, Intel was pinning its hopes on the Rambus-based chips i820/Camino and i840/Carmel which were, however, not accepted on the market because of their high price levels. What other options does a PC manufacturer have if he wishes to configure a powerful dual CPU system? At the moment, there are two low-cost solutions for equipping a board for dual operation with Pentium III. On the one hand, the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset can be installed in a special dual variant (Northbridge VT82C694XDP) or, alternatively, one reverts to the slightly more expensive Intel 815E which is, however, only capable of managing 512 MB of main memory.