Introduction.

The Intel i845 chipset has rapidly become the most popular core logic for the Intel Pentium 4 processor since its launch in August. This has mainly been due to the i845 being compatible with low cost PC-133 SDRAM as opposed to the relatively expensive Rambus RDRAM as required by the i850 chipset. What is apparent is that the i845 is now the dominant Pentium 4 compatible chipset in the market, having taken over from the i850 almost immediately after boards became available.

As we saw with the Aopen AX4BS Pro, the i845 is a stable, well designed chipset despite it not being as fast as other rival designs such as the VIA KT266A which supports the AMD Athlon range. If anything the i845 has gained a reputation for somewhat mediocre performance when compared to Rambus RDRAM and DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM designs such as those from (or about to be released from) ALi, SiS, ATi and the highly controversial VIA P4X266.

Having already established the performance capabilities of the i845 in the AX4BS Pro review, we decided to turn our attention towards another manufacturers i845 product in order to see how well it performs. For this review we extend a warm welcome to Soyo who have agreed to send the SY-P4IS2 for review at Processor Emporium.

Over the past few years Soyo have built up a strong reputation for building a range of stable, fast, high quality motherboards. From discussions with a number of PC enthusiasts it appears that Soyo have a strong following of loyal consumers who praise their boards very highly. If anything, to gain a following amongst PC enthusiasts is a difficult thing to achieve and only the very best board manufacturers have managed this. As a result of this we were very keen to look at a Soyo board.

The SY-P4IS2 is very much aimed at the mainstream Pentium 4 PC market as it is a standard ATX design. The choice of the i845 essentially drives the SY-P4IS2 towards this market segment as this is where Intel sees the i845.

To see quite how well the SY-P4IS2 did, read on.

Intel i845.

Like all Intel chipsets since the release of the i810 back in 1999, the i845 is based upon the Unified Hub Architecture. The i845 MGCH (Memory and Graphics Controller Hub), contains features such as support for up to 3 GB of main system memory along with standard features such as AGP 4X.

The i845 MGCH is complimented by the now familiar ICH 2 controller which looks after the PCI bus, Ultra ATA 100 Hard Disk Controller and the AC-97 compatible Audio codec.

Specifications.