Intel's® chipset future looks brighter than ever

With the introduction of both the Alderwood and Grantsdale chipsets expected in Q2 of this 2004, Intel® seems to be fulfilling it's promises of increased performance and stunning new technology. Continuing it's tradition of releasing high-end, mainstream, and cost-sensitive chipsets, they will be releasing the Alderwood chipset to meet the demands of the high-end market, the Grantsdale-P and G are aimed at the mainstream market and the Grantsdale GV and GL are taking care of the cost-sensitive market.

Alderwood (Northbridge)

Intel's® Alderwood chipset comes as the successor of the i875P Canterwood Chipset. The i875 chipset was wildly popular due to it's support of all the latest technologies, 800MHz. FSB, Hyper-Threading, Dual-Channel memory support, and PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology) which boosted the performance level above anything attainable by the i865PE chipset. 

The Alderwood (i925x) chipset is here to continue the tradition of Intel "one-upping" themselves. Like the i875 chipset, the new i925x chipset supports 800MHz. FSB, however it does it in a new format. The Alderwood is using a LGA-775 socket to do so. LGA-775 (Land Grid Array) is the latest technology which is being introduced along with the Grantsdale and Alderwood chipsets and will be on all upcoming Prescott motherboards. The innovations continue as Intel has chosen to utilize Dual Channel ECC DDR-II on this motherboard. This effectively doubles the bandwidth of the memory on the system and will eliminate bottlenecks that are normally seen on current DDR motherboards.

• LGA-775 "Socket T"
• 800MHz. FSB
• Hyper-Threading
• PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology)
• ECC DDR-II
• PCI Express x16

Grantsdale-P and G (Northbridge)

Intel® is far from neglecting the mainstream market with it's soon to be introduced chipsets. The Grantsdale-P (i915P) and the Grantsdale-G (i915G) chipsets differ only slightly as the G has integrated graphics, and the P does not, but besides that they are basically identical. Both chipsets support the 800MHz. FSB with Hyper-Threading while utilizing the LGA-775 socket type. Dual DDR-II is also supported with the new chipset, although it is standard DDR-II and not ECC capable. The Grantsdale-P has PCI-Express x16 support for the latest and greatest graphics cards such as the ATI R400 and the NVIDIA NV40, while the Grantsdale-G will allow for PCI Express x16 and also uses integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 3. The combination on the Grantsdale-G will allow for multiple monitor configuration. Although on-board graphics are generally scoffed at by power users, the Intel® Extreme Graphics 3 will include Pixel Shader 2.0 which will allow it to fully support the new GUI interface of Microsoft's forthcoming operating system codenamed "Longhorn".

• LGA-775 "Socket T"
• 800MHz. FSB
• Hyper-Threading
• DDR-II
• PCI Express x16

ICH6 / ICH6-R / ICH6-W (Southbridge)

With all of the new Northbridge chipsets arriving, Intel® has also worked hard to bring it's Southbridge partner up to speed. Intel has not one, but 3 new Southbridge chipsets to satisfy your every need. The most basics of the three chipsets is the ICH6. The ICH6 includes support for 4 Serial ATA ports and 1 single UltraATA/100 channel. The ICH6 has support for 4 PCI Express x1interfaces as well as continuing to support PCI.

The ICH6-R is the follow on to the ICH5-R chipset which was the RAID version of the previous Southbridge unit. The difference in the new chipset is that they have added more RAID modes, now RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 are all supported, thanks to a doubling of the previously available Serial ATA ports.

With the addition of the ICH6-W, you gain the benefit of built in wireless connectivity. Tri-band support is fully implemented with 802.11 a/b/g all available to the user.

All of the ICH6 chipsets will feature Intel® High Definition Audio (previously known as Azalia) which is the replacement for the AC'97 motherboard audio specification that we've all become familiar with over the years. This is much more than a mere sound chip though as it is designed to be an interface for virtually all media codecs on the system, from audio to DVD, Intel's® new specification is going to handle them all. With sound said to rival Creative Lab's Audigy2 card, Intel may end up upsetting audio vendors when customers who would normally invest in external devices end up satisfied with the quality and flexibility of their onboard audio.

• 4 SATA Ports
• 1 Channel UltraATA/100
• 4 PCI Express x1
• PCI Support
• Intel "Matrix RAID" = RAID 0, 1 (ICH6-R only)
• Wireless 802.11 a/b/g connectivity (ICH6-W only)
• Intel® High Definition Audio Spec.

Grantsdale-GV and GL

Looking further into the future, in Q3 of 2004, Intel® will be introducing the cost-sensitive chipsets based on the Grantsdale core. The Intel® Grantsdale-GV (i915GV) will essentially have the same features as the Grantsdale-G chipset, but with one major exception. The Intel Extreme Graphics 3 on the motherboard will be the only graphics available. Unlike the Grantsdale-G there will be no option to use external PCI Express x16 graphics.

The Intel® Grantsdale-GL (i915-GL) motherboard will be almost identical to the Grantsdale-GV, with the exception of CPU support. The Grantsdale-GL is designed for use with the Intel® Celeron processor with the Prescott core and a 533MHz. FSB. Budget-minded users would be wise to look to this board for their basic system needs, with the Celeron processor and the value chipset, this should make a very attractive price-point possible.

• LGA-775 "Socket T"
• 800MHz. FSB (533MHz FSB for the Grantsdale-GL)
• Hyper-Threading
• ECC DDR-II