Intel i845 chipset question

[BSEagle1]

What is this chipset like? I am considering getting a Falcon Northwest Fragbox which uses the chipset...PC Gamer and other magazines gave it good praise, but a friend of mine says it sucks hard. Anyone else have an opinion on it?

Thanks,
Brian

 

[dbwillis]

The 845 chipsets were pretty stable and did overclock some...you know what version 845 it has?

 

[BSEagle1]

I am not sure about that. An acquaintance of mine informed me that the 400 FSB it has is actually 4 seperate 100 meg channels, and was made to be built in the factory for a low price, and sold for a low price. That true?

 

[AndyHui]

Sounds like a lot of confused terminology.

All Pentium 4 chipsets have a quad-pumped FSB, meaning that data is sent 4 times per clock cycle. With the base clock rate of 100MHz, it results in a 400MHz FSB, or a 533MHz FSB with a base rate of 133MHz.

There are several versions of the i845 chipset, differing in the type of RAM supported and FSB supported.

The idea that "built for low price, sold for low price" doesn't really apply, except for the most basic of the i845 variants, which supports SDR SDRAM. This is the one to avoid. Apart from that, the i845 chipset using DDR SDRAM is a very good solution that is stable and performs well.

 

[BSEagle1]

Yes, the one I would be getting uses DDR RAM. Thanks for your time.

 

[lenjack]

845PE is best.