Retail
Buy
In order to keep the Pentium
4 to be an interesting and some how still affordable for the people with money,
Intel decided to bundle 128MB of PC800 Rambus memory with their retail packs.
Of course in order to support the dual Rambus channel on the 850, Intel included
two 64MB modules. As already mentioned, this only applies to retail Pentium
4 processors, the OEM market will have to supply their own.
The P4/i850 requirements
A new processor architecture requires a new motherboard capable of
supporting that specific processor, and that new motherboard capable of running
that latest processor requires a new power supply, and the case that hosts
that power supply requires to be replaced in order to fully fulfill the needs
of that new Pentium 4 setup? Well, sort of.
Intel introduced a new ATX specification (ATX 2.03). This specifies the compatible cases for the
Pentium 4 heat sink mechanism. It simply tells that a case has the added mounting
holes for the Pentium 4 Mounting Heat sink mechanism. What this means is that
current cases are not fully compatible to host a Pentium 4 setup. Of course,
if you have the patient and talent, drilling through on the tray could always
modify this.
But wait, that's not it. Not only the Pentium 4 requires a special
case, it also needs an approved power supply. As we already know, the Pentium
4 is one hungry processor. It easily reaches the 50+ W ranges. If your remember,
just a few months ago, several angry AMD users started complaining about having
problems with their systems due some power problems. The reason was simple,
the Athlon, known as a heavy power eater bundled with cheap power supply was
not able to feed the Processor due under powered voltage. Many users, that
upgraded to AMD's latest offerings had to spend the extra money and buy an
AMD approved power supply to feed their systems correctly. Intel in order
to avoid having a similar problem decided to take another step, and include
a standard for power supplies in their ATX 2.03 specification.
What they did is added an extra +12V power connector that connects
to the 850 motherboards allowing extra power to be distributed to the motherboard
around the CPU. This is basically a stability measure. Although we did not
have any problems running our Intel D850GB Motherboard that Intel provided,
we would highly suggest having an approved ATX 2.03 power supply. After all,
if you were ready to invest that 1200$+ for that Pentium 4 upgrade, what that
extra 50$ worth?
Benchmarking System(s)
| CPU(s) |
Intel
Pentium III 1000MHz
Intel Pentium 4 1500MHz
|
| Heatsink
& Fan |
Stock
Intel HSF
Stock Intel HSF
|
| Motherboard(s) |
Transcend
ASL3 i815
Intel D850GB i850
|
| Memory |
256MB MUSHKIN PC133 - CAS2
256MB PC800 Samsung RDRAM
|
| Hard
Drive(s) |
IBM
75GXP - 30GB -IDE
IBM 75GXP - 30GB IDE
|
|
CD-ROM
|
Afreey
12X DVD-ROM - IDE
Afreey 12X DVD-ROM IDE
|
| Sound
Card |
Sound
Blaster Live!
Sound Blaster Live!
|
| Video
Card |
Nvidia
GeForce 2 Ultra 64MB
Nvidia GeForce 2 Ultra 64MB
|
| Operating
System |
Windows
2000
Windows 98
|
| Video
/ VIA Drivers |
nVidia reference drivers 6.31 ,Direct X 7.0a
|
| Benchmarking
Applications |
Benchmarking
Applications
|
| Other |
Quake
III 1.25 Arena - (Win98 Only)
V-Sync Disabled.
Intel Pentium 4 Application Launcher v2.1 (Win98 and Win2k)
Ejay MP3 Plus 1.3
Go Motion VIdeo Decoder
Incoming Forces
Magnitrax 1.02
Naturally Speaking Prefered 4.0
Adobe Premiere 5.1 w/LSX-MPEG
VideoStudio 4.0
Windows Media Encoder 7.0
SYSMark 2000 (Win98 and Win2K)
SysMark 2000 Office Productivity
SysMark2000 Internet Content Creation
3DMark 2000 (Win98 and Win2k)
Sandra 2001 PRO (Win2k)
|
