X-bit labs

Intel E7205 (Granite Bay) and First Mainboards Based on It

Category: Chipsets

by FastSite

[ 12/18/2002 | 12:00 AM ]

In this review we are going to talk about one more new chipset from Intel, which supportsHyper-Threading technology and dual-channel DDR SDRAM. It is Intel E7205 chipset, also knownas Granite Bay. We will test two mainboards based on it, ASUS P4G8X and MSI GNB Max-SR, to seewhat it is worth.

Table of contents:

• Closer Look: Intel E7205
  
• Pentium 4 Chipsets with Hyper-Threading Technology: Specifications
  
• Closer Look: Intel E7205 Based Mainboards
  
• ASUS P4G8X Deluxe
  
• MSI GNB Max-SR
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

This review continues our discussion of the up-to-date chipsets for Intel Pentium 4 processors. The recent arrival of new Pentium 4 CPUs with 3.06GHz core clock frequency led to a revolution in the Socket478 chipset market. The popular and very fast chipsets we have had until now turned to be out-dated in a wink. The point is that the new processor from Intel features Hyper-Threading technology, which is not supported by most available chipsets yet. In fact, there have only been two options for a Socket478 platform that would support the Hyper-Threading technology. They are i845PE/i845GE and i850E chipsets. We should make say however that there are two more chipsets with Hyper-Threading support: i845E and i845G. But they can hardly be called up-to-date, as they don't officially support DDR333 memory.

We have already reviewed i845PE and i850E that allow using latest Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPUs. You can check the following articles on our site for more information:

• Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPU with Hyper-Threading Technology: Killing Two Birds with a Stone…
• Roundup: Seven Intel 845PE Based Mainboards

Today we are going to talk about one more new chipset from Intel, which supports Hyper-Threading and hasn't been touched upon in our previous articles. It is the Intel E7205 chipset, also known as Granite Bay. We were all waiting impatiently for this chipset, as it also supports dual-channel DDR SDRAM and thus may challenge i850E as the fastest platform for Pentium 4. So today we will discuss the features of Intel E7205 and test its performance.

Closer Look: Intel E7205

The new Intel E7205 chipset deserves close attention not only because it is the first Pentium 4 chipset from Intel to support dual-channel DDR SDRAM, but rather because it is going to be the first member of the absolutely new chipset family. The solutions from this family will be positioned for mainstream desktop platforms next year. Here are Intel's approximate plans in the chipset field for the near future:

As we see, in the second quarter of the next year i845PE, i845GE and i850E will be replaced by Springdale-P, Springdale-PE, Springdale-GE and Canterwood chipsets. The arrival of these chipsets will be accompanied by the transition of the Pentium 4 family onto 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus. The bandwidth of the Pentium 4 bus at 800MHz is 6.4GB/sec. Evidently, in order for the memory subsystem to have a comparable bandwidth, Intel will willy-nilly use dual-channel DDR SDRAM. Another memory types available can't produce such bandwidth, while DDR400 SDRAM can provide the required 6.4GB/sec.

Intel E7205 is the first desktop chipset from Intel using dual-channel DDR SDRAM controller. We may suppose that the memory controllers in future chipsets will be based on the one used in Intel 7205. To cut it short, Intel 7205 is a prototype of all the Pentium 4 chipsets to arrive in 2003. To illustrate our point, let us show you a table with listed features of the future chipsets compared to the existing Intel E7205 (Granite Bay):

Now let's examine the Granite Bay chipset more closely.

First of all, let's mention the support of Pentium 4 CPUs with 400MHz and 533MHz bus and with or without the Hyper-Threading technology. From this point of view, Intel E7205 doesn't differ from the chipsets we reviewed earlier.

The differences arise when we approach the memory controller. Intel E7205 supports two DDR SDRAM channels and resembles in that the Socket A nForce2 solution from NVIDIA. One more point of similarity with nForce2 is that the memory channels in Intel E7205 are fully independent. This means that the chipset can be used in both single- and dual-channel modes. On the other hand, duality implementation like that requires a more complicated arbitration in the memory controller than, for example, the primitive channels interleaving, which we have in Intel 850 chipset supporting RDRAM. Well, it may also be connected with the fact that the data bus width of one SDRAM channel is 64bit, while in RDRAM it's only 8bit.

Unlike i845PE and i845GE, Intel E7205 features ECC support. This shouldn't be a surprise as Intel positions its product for the high-end market sector. On the other hand, like i845PE and i845GE, Intel E7205 doesn't support dual-side memory modules, based on x16 chips. Well, such modules are not very widely spread, anyway.

But the main feature of the memory controller in Intel E7205 is that it is fully synchronous, unlike the one in NVIDIA nForce2, for example. This means that the memory in E7205-based mainboards is clocked at the rate equal to the FSB frequency. As a result, you can only use DDR200 SDRAM with CPUs supporting 400MHz bus and DDR266 SDRAM with Pentium 4 processors supporting 533MHz bus. So, the only memory types supported by the chipset are DDR200 and DDR266 SDRAM. Although Intel is already producing chipsets supporting DDR333 SDRAM, Intel E7205 doesn't use it. Intel's point stands to reason. Present-day Pentium 4 dual-channel systems just don't require faster memory. The bandwidth of the CPU bus in Pentium 4 with 133MHz FSB is 4.2GB/sec. The bandwidth of DDR266 SDRAM is 2.1GB/sec. It's clear that the dual-channel DDR266 SDRAM fully covers all the memory bandwidth requirements of modern Pentium 4 processors.

Note also that Intel E7205 requires using identical DDR DIMM module pairs to be able to work in the 128bit dual-channel mode.

As for the AGP bus, Intel E7205 is the first product of the company to feature AGP 3.0 support. So, alongside with the ordinary AGP 4x mode, the AGP 8x is also available.

Traditionally, the memory controller, the CPU interface and the AGP controller are all situated in the North Bridge of the chipset (in Intel's terminology - MCH, Memory Controller Hub). This chip is FC-BGA-packaged and boasts an impressive number of pins: 1005 in total.

As for the South Bridge, we have the usual ICH4 chip. Among other things, it supports ATA/100 and USB 2.0.

The specs of the new Intel product are impressive, but the impression may be spoiled by the prices of mainboards based on it. As Intel positions Intel E7205 at the workstations market, the company may set a rather high price. That's why we shouldn't be surprised if E7205-based mainboards will sell at a higher price than i850E-based ones, although the latter offer similar features. By the way, one more cause for E7205 based mainboards to be more expensive is the six-layer design of the PCB. The manufacturers learned how to make four-layer PCBs for i850-based mainboards, but the trick didn't work for Intel E7205 yet. That's why a number of mainboard makers put off E7205 altogether, thinking that such mainboards wouldn't be popular as a platform for high-end desktop PCs.

Pentium 4 Chipsets with Hyper-Threading Technology: Specifications

Closer Look: Intel E7205 Based Mainboards

We were lucky to get hold of two new E7205 based mainboards for our test lab. They are ASUS P4G8X Deluxe and MSI GNB Max-SR. Both products are aimed at high performance desktop PCs, rather than at workstations and have a lot of additional functionality onboard. The specs of the two mainboards are similar, but let's list them, though:

Besides these two, Intel E2705 based mainboards from Gigabyte, TYAN and Soltek are going to arrive into the market soon. We would like to remind you once again that many manufacturers, such as ABIT, Chaintech and EPoX, refused to produce mainboards on this chipset because of its high price.

ASUS P4G8X Deluxe

The E7205 based mainboard from ASUS follows the best traditions of the company. It features the full range of integrated chips, similar to what we saw in another product from ASUS, P4PE. Let's take a closer look at P4G8X.

As we see, the design of P4G8X makes a very good impression, even though it is heavily loaded with extra chips and connectors. Note, though, that the PCB is large and the mainboard may hardly fit into some non-standard cases. P4G8X is equipped with four DDR DIMM slots (two per each channel), five PCI slots and an AGP Pro 50 slot that supports AGP 8x graphics cards. One of the mainboard's PCI slots is called BlueMagic. Although you can install an ordinary PCI expansion card there, ASUS suggests that you should install a special card, produced by ASUS, which supports all available wireless network standards: Bluetooth, 802.11a and 802.11b. This card featuring also Wireless LAN is not included into the mainboard package and has to be purchased separately.

Among the integrated features, we should mention the integrated ATA RAID controller in the first place. ASUS decided to use a Sil3112A chip from Silicon Image, although the company has never integrated it onto its previous products. This chip differs from the previously used Promise PDC20376 by the support of two SerialATA-150 channels only. So, P4G8X allows building RAID arrays of SerialATA HDDs. Moreover, as Sil3112A supports the maximum of two hard drives (one per each channel) you can build RAID arrays of levels 0 and 1 only.

Among non-standard features of ASUS P4G8X we would also like to mention two Firewire ports. They are implemented by means of an additional TI TSB43AB22 controller. We were very pleased to discover not only the back panel bracket with IEEE1394 ports but also a 10-to-6 pin IEEE1394 cable inside the box.

ASUS also made sure that the user could easily utilize all the supported USB 2.0 ports. Four of them are laid out on the back panel of the case, while the remaining two are attached to an onboard connector through a back panel bracket.

P4G8X has a network controller, too. It's the traditional Broadcom BCM5702 chip that provides Gigabit Ethernet, while most mainboards from other makers usually support Fast Ethernet only. Well, there are mainboard versions that are equipped with a Broadcom BCM4401 chip and hence support only 10/100 Mbit/sec Ethernet.

The six-channel AC'97 Realtek ALC650 codec is responsible for the sound implementation on ASUS P4G8X. An additional bracket with SPDIF ports comes with the mainboard.

ASUS P4G8X boasts some extra features. Among them: voice diagnostics system, protection against installing 3.3V graphics cards (a warning LED) and Q-Fan technology. The latter implies that if the CPU temperature gets below a certain limit, the fan voltage gets automatically reduced.

The mainboard has a two-phase impulse CPU and an impulse DDR DIMM voltage regulator. Moreover, you can see screening bands around the CPU socket that are intended to increase product reliability. Well, this may be a forced measure as P4G8X has a six-layer PCB.

Like all the other Socket478 mainboards from ASUS, P4G8X doesn't need any modern power supply units with the additional 12V cable, as it has the ordinary 12V connector onboard as well.

As for design layout, we can hardly find anything to complain about. All the connectors are located rather smartly on the PCB, so that the cables wouldn't hinder airflow and prevent you from reaching the components easily.

P4G8X also offers wide opportunities for CPU overclocking. The first impressive thing worth mentioning is the supported range of FSB frequencies, which you can set in BIOS Setup: from 100MHz to 400MHz. Well, this huge upper limit looks more like a marketing move as there are no processors, which could get at least close to this bus speed, and they will hardly appear in the near future. The user can also adjust the three basic voltages: for the CPU, DIMM modules and AGP. The first voltage changes from 1.55V to 1.975V with 0.025V increment, the second - from 2.5V to 2.7V with 0.1V increment, the third one can be set to 1.5V, 1.6V or 1.7V. The AGP/PCI frequency can be modified independently of the FSB frequency: from 66MHz to 104MHz with 0.67MHz increment. The BIOS Setup also allows adjusting typical memory timings.

If the mainboard refuses to start up after some modifications of the CPU or memory settings, they will be restored to their default values on the next system restart.

MSI GNB Max-SR

The E7205 based mainboard from MSI is similar to ASUS P4G8X, which we have just described above. But there are certain differences, of course. For example, MSI doesn't offer the same wide opportunities for CPU overclocking, but supports ATA/133 hard drives. Let's have a closer look at the product:

The size of MSI GNB Max-SR is no smaller than that of ASUS P4G8X. No wonder, as it has as many slots, connectors and chips onboard as ASUS solution. This mainboard carries four DIMM slots (two per each memory channel - the slots referring to one channel are colored the same), five PCI slots and an AGP Pro 50 slot, which supports AGP 8x graphics cards and professional cards with up to 50W power consumption.

Among the integrated controllers, we would like to point out the Promise PDC20376 IDE RAID chip. Thanks to this chip, the MSI mainboard supports ATA/133 and SerialATA-150 protocols and allows building RAID arrays. Two SerialATA and one ATA/133 connectors are connected to the chip, so you can use three additional hard drives, besides the four ATA/100 HDDs supported by the South Bridge of the chipset (ICH4). The peculiarity of the PDC20376 controller is that its Parallel ATA connector allows using only one Master drive. Nevertheless, all the three drives connected to PDC20376 can be united into a RAID 0 or 1 array.

MSI GNB Max-SR also supports Firewire protocol. The integrated VIA VT6306 chip supports three IEEE1394 ports. The mainboard package includes a module to be installed into the back panel of the case instead of an expansion card. This module features two 10-pin and one 6-pin Firewire ports.

Since we have just told oyu about IEEE1394, we also can't help saying A few words about the USB 2.0 ports. In MSI GNB Max-SR they are implemented in the chipset. The four of them are put onto the back panel of the mainboard, designed in "new format" and the remaining two are connected through a special back panel bracket, called D-Bracket.

The sound is implemented on the mainboard with the help of a fully-fledged C-media CMI8738MX PCI controller that supports six-channel sound and SPDIF. The necessary SPDIF module comes with MSI GNB Max-SR. We can't call this an appropriate choice for today, though. Many AC'97 codecs (take Realtek ALC650 used by ASUS, for example) offer the same functionality and sound quality at a lower price.

Like the mainboard from ASUS, MSI GNB Max-SR is equipped with a Gigabit Ethernet controller. MSI chose to use an Intel 82540EM controller, but not a Broadcom chip.

As we have said above, the mainboard boasts MSI's own D-Bracket technology. The USB module that comes with the mainboard carries four two-color LEDs that report the errors occurring during POST.

The MSI GNB Max-SR package may also include a traditional Bluetooth set. Having sacrificed one USB port, the mainboard owner will be able to add Bluetooth support to the list of features. By the way, the Bluetooth set from MSI includes a USB key that is installed into another computer to implement wireless network connection.

The mainboard is based on a six-layer PCB required for wiring two DDR SDRAM channels. The component layout is rather well-thought. We can only say that the Parallel and Serial ATA connectors referring to the RAID controller might have been placed better. The CPU cooler connector is jammed between the DIMM slots and the Socket478. It's not good, too.

In order to increase the mainboard stability, MSI equipped it with a three-phase impulse CPU voltage regulator and an impulse DIMM slots voltage regulator. The transistors building the CPU voltage regulator are covered with passive aluminum heatsinks, while the North Bridge of the chipset is equipped with an active cooler. Moreover, the fan rotation speed of the chipset cooler is monitored by the mainboard.

As for overclocking, MSI engineers seem to have decided that an E7205 based mainboard is not destined for it. That's why BIOS Setup only allows setting the FSB frequency in the range between 133-200MHz with 1 MHz increment and doesn't allow adjusting any voltages or PCI/AGP frequency. At the same time, the mainboard does allow adjusting all the key memory timings manually.

If some changes in BIOS settings turned out erroneous and the mainboard failed to boot, you can reset the memory and CPU settings by holding down the INS key when powering the mainboard up again.

Testbed and Methods

The main goal of our today's test session is to evaluate the performance of the new dual-channel DDR SDRAM chipset from Intel, Intel E7205. We will compare it with other Intel chipsets supporting Hyper-Threading technology, namely Intel 850E and Intel 845PE. All these chipsets were tested with a Pentium 4 3.06GHz processor in all modes.

This means that Intel E7205 was tested in both: dual-channel and single-channel modes. Intel 850E was used with both PC800 RDRAM and faster, rare and expensive PC1066 RDRAM. Intel 845PE was tested with DDR266 and DDR333 SDRAM, as well as in the unofficial, but supported by some mainboards mode with DDR355 SDRAM.

The testbeds were configured as follows:

No wonder that we decided on ASUS mainboards to test the performance of different chipsets. These Socket478 boards show better results in all tests than the similar products from other manufacturers.

All the benchmarks were run in MS Windows XP Professional operation system. The mainboards tested were configured to demonstrate the maximum performance by setting the lowest timings (2-2-2-5 for 266, 333 and 355MHz memory frequency).

Performance

First, let's look at the results of the memory controller tests taken in the synthetic Cachemem benchmark:

These first results allow us to make a few preliminary observations. First, as we see, Intel E7205 in the dual-channel memory mode shows good potential and theoretically can outperform even i850E with PC1066 RDRAM, which has been the fastest Pentium 4 chipset so far. At least, Intel E7205 is faster reading from memory than i850E. Moreover, when working with DDR SDRAM it features lower latency of the memory subsystem. At the same time, i850E proves faster when writing into memory and copying data. Overall, the situation looks very unclear. By the way, the memory subsystems of Intel E7205 and i850E, both have equal theoretical bandwidth: dual-channel DDR266 SDRAM and PC1066 RDRAM have peak bandwidth of 4.2GB/sec.

There is one more interesting fact. According to cachemem results, Intel E7205 in single-channel mode is faster than i845PE that works with the same memory.

Now let's consider the results the mainboards showed in another memory bandwidth test. It's SiSoft Sandra 2003 with the popular Stream algorithm.

So, i850E outperforms Intel E7205 here, although not very much. As for Intel E7205 in its single-channel variant, it's again better than i845PE with DDR266 memory.

We would also like to point out another interesting fact. The effective bandwidth as measured by Sandra is about 98-99% of the theoretical maximum by chipsets working with DDR266 SDRAM. When we switch to DDR333 SDRAM, the effective bandwidth becomes 96% of the theoretical. This value is even lower with PC800 RDRAM: 88%. As for the dual-channel DDR266 SDRAM and PC1066 RDRAM, the ratio between the practical and theoretical bandwidths is only 80%. So, we have every right to confirm the statement about the bandwidth of dual-channel DDR266 SDRAM and PC1066 RDRAM being just enough for present-day Pentium 4 CPUs with 533MHz bus.

Now, let's go from the synthetic tests to real-life applications.

This test simulates work in business applications (they are Lotus Notes R5, Microsoft FrontPage 2002 SP-1, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Excel 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Access 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Word 2002 SP-1, Microsoft Project 2000, WinZip 8.0, Norton AntiVirus from Symantec and Netscape 6.2.1). Lower latency of the memory subsystem is most important here. That's why DDR SDRAM chipsets naturally come to the lead.

Memory subsystem bandwidth is very important for multimedia applications (Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 includes Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Adobe Premiere 6.0, Macromedia Director 8.5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055, Netscape 6.2.3, NewTek LightWave 7.5 and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 6.0). That's why the chipsets with higher bandwidth win here. Of the two favorites - Intel E7205 and i850E - the first one is the best.

i850E chipset with dual-channel PC1066 RDRAM managed to compress the files with the popular WinRAR archiving utility the fastest of all.

Similar picture can be observed when we measure how fast the testing participants can encode video into the MPEG-4 format.

The 3DMark2001 SE test measures how fast gaming 3D graphics can be processed. It once again proves the superiority of the i850E chipset supporting RDRAM.

The same situation takes place in the Return to Castle Wolfenstein game. But here Intel E7205 with dual-channel DDR266 proves even slower than i845PE that is functioning in the unofficial mode with DDR355 SDRAM.

Intel E7205 makes up for all the previous losses in Unreal Tournament 2003 and leaves all the competitors behind.

Next, we checked the mainboards performance in SPECviewperf 7.0. This test is a very good tool for comparing different chipsets, as its results depend a lot on effective communication between the CPU and the memory.

Well, we can't say anything definite basing on the results in SPECviewperf 7.0. Depending on the nature of the given test, Intel E7205 or i850E take the lead. The third chipset, i845PE, can't compete with the leaders even working with DDR355 SDRAM. Well, one thing is clear here, though: i850E with PC800 RDRAM can't be called a high performance solution anymore, as it is often slower than single-channel DDR SDRAM solutions with DDR333 memory.

Final rendering is a curious task, if you look at the diagrams above. As we see, RDRAM can't provide the highest rendering speed in 3ds max 5 or Lightwave 7.5.

In conclusion we would like to compare two mainboards based on Intel E7205 chipset discussed above. For a more illustrative picture, the results of ASUS P4G8X Deluxe and MSI GNB Max-SR are arranged according to the performance of i845PE with DDR333 taken for the reference point. Intel E7205 based mainboards were benchmarked in dual-channel mode.

The mainboard from ASUS is a little faster, although the performance difference is hardly serious: less than 1%.

Conclusion

Now we can answer the main question of the today's investigation: whether Intel E7205 chipset with the dual-channel DDR266 SDRAM can be a worthy substitute for Intel 850E. The answer is "yes". But there are certain thinks to keep in mind anyway. Although Intel 850E with PC800 RDRAM is definitely slower than Intel E7205, the more expensive PC1066 RDRAM allows it to successfully compete with the new Intel product. Moreover, although Intel E7205 based mainboards use cheaper DDR SDRAM, the platforms based on the new chipset will be rather expensive. The mainboards will cost a lot due to high cost of the chipset and six-layer design of the PCB. Seems like Intel E7205 can't definitely surpass its RDRAM competitor in terms of price-to-performance ratio.

This being the case, we have to take into account the formal features of the chipsets. And here Intel E7205 is clearly a more perspective product. It supports the up-to-day AGP 8x protocol, boasts a newer ICH4 South Bridge with enabled USB 2.0 interface. Intel 850E can't claim AGP 8x or USB 2.0 support and seems now a somewhat out-dated product. There is nothing to be surprised with. Intel 850 chipset family has been in the market for over two years, while Intel E7205 is a brand-new solution, which is to give birth to a whole new dynasty of dual-channel DDR SDRAM chipsets for Intel Pentium 4 processors.