Intel's i845 DDR Chipset Debuts
MSI's 845 Ultra-ARU & DFI's NB70-SC
DDR Solutions Based On Intel's New Value Platform

By, Dave Altavilla
December 17 2001

 
Please take a quick look at our test bed configuration as a reference point for making assessments.

HotHardware's Test Systems
WindowsXP and The P4

  • Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz. Processor  

  • 256MB of Samsung PC800 RAMBUS DRDRAM

  • nVidia GeForce3 Ti500

  • Thermaltake P4 Volcano 478 Cooler

  • IBM DTLA307030 30Gig ATA100 7200 RPM Hard Drive

  • WindowsXP Professional 

  • Direct X 8.1 and nVidia reference drivers version 21.85

  • Intel chipset drivers version 3.20.1008

  • VIA Chipset Drivers  Version 4.36V and the VIA AGP Driver 4.10

Motherboards:

  • MSI 845 Ultra-ARU, DFI NB70-SC, Intel D845BG, VIA P4XB-SA
     

Overclocking i845DDR Motherboards
We can't complain

Our first order of business was to find out how high we could push our new DDR based i845s past the legal limit.  We only made an effort with the MSI and DFI boards.  Here are the results.

DFI NB70-SC:

The DFI NB70-SC was stable at 2.1GHz. with our 1.9GHz. chip.  This was achieved at default voltage since the board cannot adjust the CPU's core voltage beyond it's default.  We set the front side bus speed to 110MHz. which also pushed the memory clock to 143MHz. SDR or 286MHz. DDR.  Sandra's memory test shows a slightly different number due to somewhat aggressive timing on the PLL for this board.

CPU Test @ 2.1GHz.

Memory Test @ 2.1GHz.


MSI 845 Ultra-ARU:

The MSI 845 Ultra-ARU was able to achieve a slightly higher overclock due largely to its ability to set the CPU core voltage up to 1.85V.  We were able to achieve 2.14GHz. with this setting.  The front side bus speed was set to 113MHz. and the memory bus speed was 146MHz. or 292MHz.  DDR.  Here are the results.

CPU Test @ 2.14GHz.

Memory Test @ 2.14GHz.

As you can see, for the MSI 845 Ultra, a little extra voltage did pay off nicely.
 

 

Benchmarks - SiSoft Sandra 2002
Just some baseline numbers

We'll provide you with the rest of our Sandra testing, so you can see what things look like at stock speeds.

 

CPU 1.9G NB70

CPU 1.9G 845Ultra

Memory NB70

Memory 845Ultra

Multimedia NB70

Multimedia 845Ultra

Interestingly enough, both i845 boards in this test, competed well against the i850 reference systems.  Furthermore, the memory bandwidth tests show the i845DDR also in the ballpark of its higher priced cousin.  It seems as if the DFI NB70 nudged out the MSI 845 Ultra-ARU by a tight margin, in most of these tests.




Wintstones, 3DMark and Video 2000 MPEG Encode