Tweakers Australia has posted a detailed look at the Intel 850E Rambus chipset for the P4, incorporating support for the 533MHz QDR bus.
Earlier this year, Intel released their second iteration of the Pentium 4 processor codenamed 'Northwood'. It replaced the former 'Willamette' based Pentium 4 by updating its NetBurst architecture, dropping the die process down to .13 micron from .18 micron, and strapping on an additional 256KB of full-speed L2 cache to bring the total to 512KB. However, both processors still optimised a 400MHz QDR bus with a 3.2GB/s data bandwidth limitation, matching the memory bandwidth the dual channel RDRAM provided, compliments of the Intel 850 chipset. Well earlier this month Intel announced and launched the third iteration of their P4, still known as Northwood, but featuring a new 533MHz quad pumped 133MHz data bus to bestow a whopping 4.2GB/s of data bandwidth. Along with this, Intel presented the 850E chipset with official support for the P4's new 533MHz data bus, being the only distinction from the former 850 chipset. 133MHz PC1066 RDRAM support failed to make it's way into the 850E, although many new boards based on the 850E do feature the necessary clock dividers/multipliers, and wont have a problem running this type of memory - even if the standard is classified as 'unofficial'.Read more
