The 26th of April 1999 saw the release of the Intel Celeron 466 MHz procesor. Accompanying this was the first release of Intels latest generation of core logic chipsets, the 810. This is part of a trio of chipsets comprising the 810, 810e and 820 chipsets which point to the future development of the PC. Also we see the abandonment of Intel's traditional chipset naming scheme such as "TX", "LX" and "BX" chipsets, which we at the Processor Emporium feel is a shame as we quite liked it, but along with the new names the 810 points to the future.

Intel 810, what does it do?

The 810 is a chipset designed purely to work with the Intel Celeron processor and so only works in its PPGA Socket 370 form. This enables Intel to draw a line in the sand between its older LX, BX & ZX chipsets and new generation chipsets such as the 810. It also has support for the 100 MHz bus (Celeron 500) and the new UDMA 66 standard hard disk controllers.

One of the most significant features of the 810 chipset is the integration of the i740 graphics accelerator onto the chipset itself. This enables the OEM's to make a saving when building Celeron based PC's as it will have a powerful graphics controller as standard on the motherboard. This feature will be further enhanced with the forthcoming release of the 810e chipset which will feature Intel's new i752 graphics accelerator as standard.

The main significant technical enhancement for the 810 chipset is the adoption of Intel's new Accelerated Hub Architecture, which removes the PCI bus as the main component interconnect. This allows areas such as the IDE channel to have a direct connection to the chipset without having to pass through the PCI bus. The integration of the I/O controller also means that the North Bridge / South Bridge controller division can be dispensed with, thus it being seated at the centre of Intel's plan to end support for the legacy ISA architechture.

So to find out what the new 810 chipset can offer the end user, read on...

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