Intel 845 DDR Motherboard Roundup - December 2001

Final Words

Although the P4X266A and SiS 645 chipsets are both faster than the i845 with DDR SDRAM, neither chipset has such a stable following of platforms as the i845. We've been working on a P4X266/P4X266A roundup alongside the i845 DDR roundup and the maturity of the boards is like night and day; the i845 platforms are much more stable, especially when operated with all memory banks populated.

Now it comes time to crown a winner and unlike our i845 SDRAM roundup, this time around there are some clear winners.

Taking the AnandTech Editors Choice Bronze Award is the Soyo P4I Fire Dragon. The P4I Fire Dragon is feature filled with a high-performing ATA-133 RAID solution, FireWire, onboard audio and LAN. All of the appropriate voltages can be adjusted as can the FSB to your hardware's limits. What held this board back is the fact that it only featured 2 DIMM slots rather than the 3 slots that both the silver and gold medal winners both implemented.

The AnandTech Editors Choice Silver Award goes to the MSI 845 Ultra. This board offers almost everything the Soyo P4I Fire Dragon has plus a third DIMM slot which is quite useful. What held the 845 Ultra back is its lack of any onboard ethernet controller.

The best overall 845 motherboard with DDR SDRAM is the Gigabyte P4 Titan DDR which is the recipient of our Editors Choice Gold Award. The P4 Titan DDR offers everything the MSI 845 Ultra does plus adds onboard LAN and a more user friendly BIOS setup with more voltage adjustment options as well as Gigabyte's Dual BIOS feature. We would have liked to have seen a more robust IDE RAID implementation offering stripe sizes other than 64KB and one that performed a little better.

It was a tough call but there you have it. Later this week we'll bring you a study on the performance of the i845 chipset in comparison to the competing solutions from SiS, VIA and even Intel themselves.