Intel has recently released a range of new chipsets designed to support the current Pentium 4 Prescott and Extreme Edition processors, along with the dual-core Smithfield processors. These new chipsets are now known as the 955X, 945P/G are designed to replace the 915P, the 915L, the 915PL and the 910GL chipsets. The key features of the new chipsets are 800MHz/1066MHz FSB support, dual-channel 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, Intel's new GMA950 graphics core (i945G only), Serial ATA II with some new RAID modes by the new I/O controller and numerous other enhancements.
The 955X is of course the flagship chipset designed to deliver maximum performance for power-users and enthusiasts alike. The 945P/G series on the other hand are designed to be more mainstream products. Currently the average 955X motherboard can be found retailing for a little over $200 US, where as the 945P/G boards are around the $150 US mark. The key difference between the two chipsets is the added memory support for the 955X chipset. This chipset offers a total memory capacity of 8GB's; this is 4GB's more than the 945P/G chipsets. The 955X also supports ECC memory and Intel's Memory Pipeline Technology.
The Intel Memory Pipeline is said to be an enhanced memory pipelining technology that enables a higher utilization of each memory channel, accelerating data transfers between the processor and system memory and resulting in higher system performance. While this technology is missing on the 945 versions I do not believe their will be a noticeable performance difference between the chipsets. Given how things have been in the past with Intel chipsets it would be unwise to expect a performance difference between the mainstream and performance chipsets.
These new chipsets boast all the features found in previous Intel chipsets with a few new additions. The Intel High Definition (HD) Audio still remains along with the Intel Matrix Storage Technology. Other features include Intel's Flex Memory Technology that allows for easier upgrades by allowing different memory sizes to be populated and remain in dual-channel mode. The chipsets also support SATAII allowing for 3GB/s throughput. While all the chipsets do officially support DDR2-667, Gigabyte have gone and officially added DDR2-888 support to their 955X and 945P/G motherboards. Although this is not an official ?DDR2?specification, Gigabyte claims that their boards can operate at DDR2-888 with the correct hardware.
Gigabyte's i945P motherboard is known as the ?I945P Pro?and is a member of the highly esteemed ?iDNA?family. Gigabyte likes to create themes for their high-end motherboards that place them in a particular category or family. In the past we have seen the GT2004 series, the Performance Extreme series, the 8 Sigma series and of course the 6-Dual Miracle series. The new iDNA series currently consists of a number of LGA775 motherboards. The 8I945P Pro is of course one of these boards sporting the i945P chipset.
Easily the most impressive aspect of the Gigabyte 8I945P Pro is the vast amount of high-end features the board offers for just $150 US. The boards embedded Realtek ALC882 audio codec is by far one of the best solutions you will find featured on a motherboard. Still to this day, Gigabyte is the only motherboard manufacturer to include IEEE1394b support (Firewire 800) and this feature is found on the 8I945P Pro. The board's Broadcom 5789 Gigabit Ethernet controller support is also impressive. The list of features just goes on and I will look into them all in more detail shortly.
Gigabyte Working on Quad-SLI Motherboard (2005-06-01)