Core i5 and ICH10R, instead of P55?

[VirtualLarry]

Looking at the platform pictures on this page, both chipsets connect via DMI bus. Is there any technical reason why a mobo mfg couldn't just use an ICH10R chipset and pair it up with a Core I5, and produce a working, truly budget motherboard?

A $50 Core I5 motherboard would be just what the doctor ordered. $150 is way too high for a "mainstream" platform motherboard. Especially when you can get top-of-the-line 775 mobos for $120.

 

[Luminair]

they should just leave it off altogether to save even more money!

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The mainstream board prices will come down over time. Top of the line 775 (P45) mobos did cost around the $150 ($135+) when they first came out.

But I'd say the premium right now is worth it. With 1156 you'll have to get (right now) a processor that's faster than any LGA775 processor.

 

[yh125d]

You would lose all PCI-e 1x slots, since those get powered through the 4 lanes on the P55, and if you tried to use the CPU pci-e lanes you'd reduce your GPU bandwidth to 8x even with a single GPU. If that is even possible, that is. I don't think the i5 pci-e controller can do anything but 16x or 8x/8x. Maybe in a future revision we could see an i5 (or its successor) with 32 lanes, and more configuration options so you could get full 16x/16x for the GPUs (only if no pci-e 1x slots are populated) or 16x/8x for your GPUs, a pci-e 4x slot and up to 4 pci-e 1x. Now THAT would be an awesome package from intel. Also decoupling the pci-e controller from the bclk (maybe tie it to the uncore or make it completely independent) to simplify overclocking)

We'll have to wait til 32nm or smaller to see something like that though, as it ould increase the die size quite a bit



Also, something I've been wondering to myself... Since they've moved the IMC and now PCI-e controller onto the CPU, and the P55 is really a glorified southbridge, it should run quite cool right? I mean since they're moving all the high TDP functions to the CPU...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: yh125d
You would lose all PCI-e 1x slots, since those get powered through the 4 lanes on the P55,

ICH10R has six PCI-E x1 lanes, from the picture I was looking at.

Originally posted by: yh125d
and if you tried to use the CPU pci-e lanes you'd reduce your GPU bandwidth to 8x even with a single GPU.

Why would that be? I don't see any reason for that.
Oh, you're thinking that the ICH10R doesn't have any PCI-E lanes. But it does.

Originally posted by: yh125d
Also, something I've been wondering to myself... Since they've moved the IMC and now PCI-e controller onto the CPU, and the P55 is really a glorified southbridge, it should run quite cool right? I mean since they're moving all the high TDP functions to the CPU...

It should run quite cool, but I cannot quite fathom exactly why one couldn't use an ICH10R as the southbridge, if they both use an identical DMI interface. They might both be called DMI, but I suppose there could be differences.

 

[armstrda]

Judging by the technical notes on Intel's site, the P55 looks pretty similar to the ICH10R already. In fact, the TDP is pretty close too:

ICH10R - 4.5W http://ark.intel.com/chipset.aspx?familyID=34470
P55 - 4.7W http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/designguide/322171.pdf (page 13)

 

[ViRGE]

Gary Key has a post up pondering this exact point: http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=641

Instead, we end up with what I would conveniently call ICH10.1. Even Windows 7 agrees with us when loading drivers. Except that PCH is the new ICH, otherwise we are talking the same part, almost. There are a few minor differences between the P55 and ICH10R as we see below.


The P55 gives you six 3 Gb/s SATA ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet MAC , HD Audio, and eight lanes of PCI Express 2.0 goodness all for $40. That price tag buys you two additional USB ports and two additional PCIe lanes over the $3 ICH10R. The PCI Express lanes are version 2.0 but Intel decided to limit their speed to PCIe 1.x specs at 2.5GT/s. Why? We think it is because the DMI link continues at 1GB/s in each direction, which means a decent 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID card and a few upcoming 6Gb/s drives (SSDs anyone) could easily saturate the link. The P55 and ICH10R both consume a little over 4.5W during normal operation.

On a technical level, you could probably replace the PCH with any DMI-enabled ICH, since they all use the same interface. They're not pin compatible though, so you'd need an appropriate PCB layout.

However since we're talking about Intel, it's not going to happen. You would most certainly be sued in to the ground for breach of contract if you made a ICH10R instead of a P55, and Intel has probably used some token technical measure (such as another pin) to keep the ICH10R from being used.

As it stands now, your only option is to pay $40 for a chip that Intel sells for $3 for X58 boards, and probably only costs $1 to make. And you wonder why they don't want NVIDIA making chipsets for the Nehalem-derivative processors.

 

[yh125d]

d'oh, I would have sworn LGA 775 board got all their pci-e lanes from the NB. Disregard my two concerns

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln
The mainstream board prices will come down over time. Top of the line 775 (P45) mobos did cost around the $150 ($135+) when they first came out.

But I'd say the premium right now is worth it. With 1156 you'll have to get (right now) a processor that's faster than any LGA775 processor.

what? there were p45 mobos close to $300 at launch. iirc it came out before x48 and a lot of people were hoping that x8/x8 would be a "good enough" crossfire solution, plus it was first at 65nm so tech junkies wanted it, etc.

even p35 mobos were close to $250 for the top of the line at launch.

WOW, good info virge. So now amd is causing nvidia problems in 2 directions: video cards now b/c ati division is actually competitive, and chipsets market b/c phenom & co suck so much that most serious users will only consider intel. We need some serious bulldozer action NOW.