Intel’s i845 (SDRAM) Chipset

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First Impressions

First I’d like to get this table out of the way – read it, look at the numbers, read the summary below and then try to forget about it. I know I had to in order to realize what market the i845 chipset is aimed at and how well it works for that market.

Why should you forget about it? Simple, the market for the i845 chipset is NOT the same as for the i850, plain and simple. But there are a few noteworthy results I’d like to point out where even the i845 with SDRAM and the fastest P4 clearly has an advantage over the fastest P3.– and they are all ‘multimedia’ based.

• 3D Winbench CPU
• Winbench FPU
• 3D Mark 2001
• Final Reality
• Video 2000

Sure, the 1.2GHz P3 i815 SDRAM (fastest available), or the 2.0GHz P4 and its i850 RDRAM (fastest combo available) beats the i845 and P4 2.0GHz with SDRAM in a number of business applications. And you can see the difference in memory bandwidth between the SDRAM and RDRAM when using a P4 CPU, but is performance all we are looking for? I think not. And is the performance market what Intel has in mind for the i845? Again I think not. Think price vs. performance, not MHz vs. MHz or the ultimate high score.

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