It is not a really unique situation when products developed by Intel appear for sale earlier than they are officially announced, however, not always such products appear to be buggy and work erratically. As our reader pointed out, certain mainboards based on i865-series chipsets may work unstably due to several possible issues in certain situations.

Since i865PE, i865P and i865G are not yet announced officially, there is no one to blame for glitches and other unpleasant things that happen with such PC hardware. On the other hand, keep in mind that all mainboards that are available now will also be available after the 21^st of May, hence, you should know what to expect from them, shouldn’t you?

The first issue noted by our reader Matt from the USA concerns DDR SDRAM memory he used with systems powered by i865PE-based mainboards. You should get only quality memory modules from approved manufacturers, not just a couple of the so-called “noname” memory sticks. All I can say now is that we had no troubles with our i865PE-based mainboard from a Taiwanese manufacturer with Corsair XMS3200, Corsair TWINX512-3200LL as well as PC3700 memory modules from OCZ, but I am not sure about different devices from different vendors. In short, to avoid the troubles with memory, use only quality memory modules with Springdale platforms.

The second known issue with certain mainboards powered by i865PE is a driver issue. According to several mainboard makers there are some bugs in current version of Intel’s drivers, so, there may be some problems with DVD decoders as well as benchmarking software, for instance, with 3DMark2001 and 3DMark03. In fact, some other graphics and video applications also may cause bugs to emerge, so, keep this in mind. Intel does not provide any driver updates for its i865-series at this point, however, as far as I can say, not all i865PE powered mainboards are affected. To solve the possible issue if they occur, try to keep an eye on Intel’s and your mainboard manufacturer’s web-sites.

All-in-all, if you consider getting an i865PE powered mainboard now or shortly after the launch, keep in mind the possible bugs and choose only quality hardware.