Tom's Hardware Guide i815 review

Tom heeft rechtstreeks vanaf Computex een review gepost van een moederbord met final i815 silicon. Uit de benchmarks blijkt dat de i815 in vrijwel alle benchmarks lager presteert dan de 'BX133', hoewel meestal wel sneller dan de i820 en i840 met PC800 Rambus. De Rambus borden zijn sneller wanneer AGP texturing belangrijk wordt, omdat de bandbreedte van de frontside bus bij PC800 DRAM niet beperkt wordt wanneer geheugen bandbreedte door de AGP poort wordt weggepikt. Tom vraagt zich af of de lagere performance van de i815 te wijten is aan politiek (Rambus beter laten lijken dan het is), of dat Intel werkelijk niet in staat is om de i815 sneller te maken dan de twee jaar oude BX:

I would have loved to congratulate Intel for the development of i815, but the fact that BX133 is still faster in the majority of benchmarks leaves me unsatisfied. I still don't see any sensible reason why Solano should not be able to reach BX133-scores or even outperform its two-year-old predecessor. Solano's 'underperformance' is raising some serious questions. Was Intel unable to make i815 as fast as 440BX or did Intel simply not want to make it too fast? I am sure that we won't ever get an honest answer to this question, so I leave it up to you to answer this question for yourself.

After I pointed out my disapproval of i815's performance in comparison with BX133, I still have to praise it for leaving its Rambus-brothers behind in the majority of benchmarks. It may be that the overclockers amongst us are disappointed about Solano, but all the ones out there, who were afraid of running BX beyond spec, have now found their perfect solution. Solano is faster and cheaper than i820 or i840 and it beats VIA's Apollo Pro133A PC133 chipset too, so it deserves to be called 'Best Coppermine Solution', taking this title away from the Apollo Pro133A. The question now is how expensive i815-platforms will be. After all you have to pay for an integrated graphics solution, regardless if you want to use it or not. Motherboards with VIA's Apollo Pro 133A will remain the most cost effective choice, but i815-platforms will be able to deliver superior performance at a price that is significantly lower than i820 and i840.

Thanks DiGiSTORM_ voor de tip.