Seeking information on motherboard chip Intel solano i815EP
Despite what we often say about the waves of the Yangtze River (a new generation beats the old?), Intel's most iconic motherboard control chipset of all time, the 440BX, is the most powerful.
Advanced Mode
Advanced mode provides a more comprehensive UEFI BIOS environment that is designed to help users quickly and effortlessly fine-tune their PC's performance. external frequency - and many other things. But in any case, the 440BX is old, and there are many new technologies that cannot be supported. And since the I810 chipset, Intel has been insisting on integrated chipsets as the mainstream of the market, so there was the first successor of the 440BX - Intel i815 (E), but the integrated I752 display chip in it just couldn't satisfy, and for many users, in order to meet the higher Requirements of the application, had to buy a new graphics card and abandon the I752, so that the purchase of the 815E when the investment in which the I752 will be wasted, the I752 can really be a bit tasteless, discarded can be a taste; at the same time, Intel's biggest competitor in the motherboard market VIA VIA is to take advantage of the break in Intel's products, to take advantage of the opportunity to launch a series of new chipset encroachment on the market. In this case, Intel must also be the seat of the restless, so after weighing the situation, they returned to the development of independent chipsets on the road, the launch of the latest motherboard chipset codenamed i815EP.
I. i815EP's true colors
1. Center-accelerated architecture
Center-accelerated architecture is something that Intel has been using a lot lately, and the i815EP still carries on the tradition of the i81x series of chipsets, which don't use the traditional North-South bridge chip architecture, but rather use the emerging center-accelerated architecture. In the center-accelerated architecture, the role of the North Bridge is replaced by a chip called the Memory Control Center MCH (544 pins, BGA package), the equivalent of the South Bridge chip is the ICH (360 pins, EBGA package) - in and out of the Output Control Center.The ICH and the MCH **** enjoy the line and the data, and other All other devices are connected to the ICH and MCH through their own proprietary circuits. It should be noted that these circuits are independent of each other, which means that under the center-accelerated architecture, devices that require high-speed bandwidth resources, such as memory, CPU, etc., can run in parallel and bottlenecks and wait phenomena have been greatly alleviated, which contributes to the overall performance improvement of the system.
Let's take a closer look at what these two chips can do for you.
The MCH memory control chip consists of four main components: the system bus control unit, the SDRAM control unit, the HUB unit, and the AGP unit.
The system bus control unit is mainly responsible for the data exchange between the CPU and the MCH chip, the i815EP's MCH bus control unit is able to provide the standard frequency of 66/100/133MHZ, of course, the manufacturer can provide other frequencies according to the market needs, the socket is still used in the socket-370 architecture, which is sure to be Unchanged, just need to note that although it provides a frequency of 66MHZ, i815EP in the MCH chip does no longer support PPGA package Celeron processor (that is, the old Celeron or Celeron I), which is the same as the i815E MCH is different, so if you choose to use i815EP chipset motherboards, you will be able to use the FCPGA package of the Celeron II or the copper mine, the old Celeron users. The i815EP is a single-processor system that is a bit of a shame, but for the vast majority of users, a multi-processor system is unnecessary, and Intel's use of this method to reduce costs will have little impact on the market.
In terms of the SDRAM control unit (which is actually the memory control unit), the i815EP allows users to use PC100 and PC133 specification SDRAM with 16MB/64MB/128MB/256MB chips, supporting a minimum of 32MB up to a maximum capacity of 512MB of memory, and asynchronous operation of the memory is also allowed, but the i815EP does not support ECC. ECC error correction is not supported on the i815EP.
The role of the HUB unit is also not to be underestimated, which is responsible for the important bridge between the MCH and ICH, without the HUB the entire system can not be run. AGP part of the support for AGP2X and 4X, may be in consideration of the AGP Pro is not popular at the present time, so the i815EP canceled the support of AGP Pro, which is not likely to have much impact on the user.
The I815EP's MCH has a lot of similarities to the i815E GMCH (Graphics Card/Memory Control Hub), but the cost has dropped a lot, with savings mainly in graphics card controllers and research costs.
Next to say ICH, i815EP use ICH2 chip by ATA 100 control unit, network control unit, pci control unit, USB control unit, FWH control unit and AC'97 sound control unit, do not to so many units, in fact, the ICH than the MCH much simpler, and is not it! The ICH is much simpler than the MCH, and there is a feeling that the ICH is not that different from the I815E!
2. i752 display circuitry? It's not there!
Still talking about this thing called chicken ribs, i815EP in the removal of the i815E in the i752 display circuit, how to remove it? A relatively simple way is to shield the original i815E MCH with i752-related parts, and the original MCH is responsible for the display circuitry of the VGA and video signal output part of the pin in the new i815EP MCH chip redefined at the same time in the BIOS prohibit the initialization of the graphic work, so that the original i815E becomes the i815EP. The original i815E became the actual i815EP. Now you know why I said earlier that it saves research costs, right? By doing so, Intel does not have to redesign the MCH circuit that does not contain the i752. I believe that motherboard manufacturers are also happy to do this, because this way, the product replacement cycle becomes shorter, and the speed of new product launch is much faster.
3. New AC'97 audio control unit
The AC'97 audio unit in the i815EP is the latest version 2.1, which adds a digital unit called "Digital Link". In this new version, a digital unit called "Digital Link" has been added, which allows the 2.1 version of AC'97 to be connected to more than one additional decoder. i815EP is able to support 6-channel surround sound output because the 2.1 version of the AC'97 control unit can be connected to two decoder chips at the same time. What hasn't improved is that the 2.1 version is still considered a soft sound card, and a lot of the computation still has to be done by the CPU.
Second, a closer look through the motherboard
Motherboards with the i815EP chipset are already on the market, and the earliest we've seen an i815EP-based motherboard is ASUS CUSL2-C, with the following specifications:
Using the Intel 815EP chipset
Supporting FCPGA-packaged Socket 370 Processor, 100/133 MHz Intel Pentium III or 66 MHz Celeron
Three 168-pin DIMM slots supporting PC100/PC133 SDRAM
Support for memory up to 512MB, but no ECC support
One standard AGP slot supporting 2x/4x mode
Six 32-bit PCI slots, one CNR slot
Four USB ports, including two integrated USB ports and two add-on USB ports
Two IDE ports with ATA/33/66/100 support, total*** support for four ATAPI devices
Support for STR ( Suspend to RAM)
Support ASUS iPanel
ATX architecture, 30.5x20.8 cm
Since it's an ASUS thing, there's naturally nothing to say about workmanship, and the overall design of the motherboard is pleasing to the eye, and the stability of this motherboard is still the number one thing that ASUS takes into account when it comes to the critical parts. The materials used are not at all stingy, such as the 11 LowESR 1500 uF capacitors installed here in the voltage pulse converter, which is hard to see on some miscellaneous motherboards. 6 PCI slots should be enough, right? The elimination of the ISA slot is perfectly acceptable, as ISA has been largely pushed out of the market, and the CUSL2-C is not suitable for older users to upgrade to due to its lack of support for PPGA-packaged processors.
Looking more closely, sure enough, the AGP Pro slot is gone, and the original place where the AGP Pro slot was installed has been replaced with our common AGP slot, which won't have much of an impact, right? AGP Pro is too far ahead of its time; the CNR slot has also been reduced to one from the previous generation of products, reducing the number of slots, but I believe that it will have little impact on the user, as there are very few CNR-type sound cards and modems for sale. The number of CNR slots has also been reduced from two to one, but I believe this will have little impact on users, as there are few CNR-type sound cards and modems on the market, and I've only seen one type of CNR NIC in the Chengdu market, so reducing the number of CNR slots to reduce costs is still necessary; the number of USB ports has also been reduced to four, whereas in the previous CUSL2, it could support seven, and in the CUBX-E (a high-end product of the BX), it could support five. The CUSL2-C has only one COM port in the standard position (where the COM ports on other motherboards are located), and the other COM port has been placed on the front part of the motherboard. This design is not unprecedented, as the classic motherboards P55T2P4 (430HX chipset) and P3B-F (440BX chipset) are both designed in this way. Another big change is that the VGA connector for integrated graphics is gone.
For us, the main concern is the actual performance of this motherboard, i815EP compared to the i815E performance is improved or decreased, in order to illustrate this issue, we made a simple test:
CUP: Intel PIIIEB 600 MHz, 133 MHz external frequency
Test motherboard: ASUS CUSL2-C (i815EP)
Comparison motherboard: ASUS CUSL2 (i815E)
Memory: KingMAX PC133 128 MB
Hard disk: Diamond 10 20GB 5400 rpm
Video card: VoodooIII 3000 16MB
Tests Results:
SYS Mark2000 CPU Mark99 Q3A 800*600 16bit
ASUS CUSL2-C 140 59.8 68.4fps
ASUS CUSL2 138 59.6 68fps
This is just a simple test, but it is enough to It shows that the i815EP is indeed very good (as the CUSL2 is known to be ****ty), and that it slightly outperforms the i815E, but without comparing it to other motherboards (I can't find any motherboards in the same class, and I don't know if that manufacturer would be willing to sponsor one? ^_^), we can't say whether the i815EP is that much better than the i815E because of ASUS's improved design, or whether the i815EP is actually a bit better. But from this point of view, the i815EP is fully capable of carrying the burden of the BX successor, in terms of performance, it will not let us down. CUSL2-C price is not expensive, the beginning of the 1000 yuan, you know that this is ASUS's newest motherboards, and in the near future, the i815EP motherboards prices should be reduced.
Asus has gone ahead, what about other manufacturers? In addition to the CUSL2-C, the i815EP motherboards that we know more about are MSI's 815EP Pro and 815EP Pro-R. At the time of writing this article in the market we have not seen either of these products on the market, but through MSI's press releases and images we know that the 815EP Pro-R motherboards are an expansion of the 815EP Pro, adding IDE RAID functionality, tailored for users who are more sensitive to disk system performance and data security.
Besides that, the i815EP motherboards from GIGABYTE and STAR Technology are also on the production schedule, and I believe they will be available soon.
Three, the i815EP prospect of analysis
In fact, the i815EP can be considered to be the simplified version of the i815E, the biggest improvement is to remove the original VGA part (which is also known as the chicken ribs of the I752 graphics card), so as to become a stand-alone chipset, and it is precisely because of this, theoretically speaking, the i815EP should be cheaper than the i815E, but the i815EP is also cheaper than the i815E. The i815E is cheaper than the i815E, but now, probably because it's a new product, motherboards using the i815EP are still a little more expensive than the i815E motherboards, but I believe that as more motherboards come on the market, the price should come down soon, and we're looking forward to seeing it recapture the glory of the 440BX.
But the road in front of Intel is not easy to go, first of all, VIA's 694x in the market reputation has been very loud, the user's acceptance rate is very high, the degree of trust is also very high, cheap and good quality will always be one of the important weapons in its fight against Intel, and the use of the 694x products are also becoming more mature, and its scenario is a little bit like the original 440BX in the support of the motherboard makers! The scene is a bit like when the 440BX was perfected with the support of motherboard manufacturers. There is also Intel's loss in the CPU market has also cast a shadow over the promotion of the i815EP, because if more and more people use AMD's CPU is bound to affect the sales of the i815EP, and AMD and VIA vigorously promote the DDR chipset motherboards will soon come out there are bound to make more and more people use AMD's CPU (is not a little bit of a bite?), so the cycle, Intel is more and more people use AMD's CPU (is not a bit of a bite?). The cycle is one that Intel clearly doesn't want to see.
Of course, the i8155EP is also advantageous in terms of Intel's most successful chipset ever, the 440BX, will be completely launched on the market in January next year, and many people are looking forward to Intel's ability to have a standalone chipset to continue the splendor of the BX, the i815EP has surfaced just in such a situation. With such a high level of anticipation and Intel's influence and performance, it wouldn't be surprising to see the i815EP succeed in the future.
According to the current situation, Intel and VIA are competing for the top spot, and it's hard to say who's going to die, so we'll just let the market tell us what's going on.