The Inquirer web-site unveiled the prices of Intel’s forthcoming core-logic products, the i875P and i865P/PE/G with ICH5. The information is pretty interesting and fully corresponds to the fact we published earlier. Just like was noted, the i865 series (aka Springdale) is made for mainstream computers, while the i875P (aka Canterwood) is designed for workstations, as a result, the prices of both are comparable to the current offerings for the mentioned market segments.

What is very interesting is that Intel will finally implement RAID controller inside their ICH, therefore, expect 2 versions of the ICH5 controllers to hit the market. The first one (let’s call it simply ICH5) supports 8 USB 2.0 ports, two ATA-33/66/100 ports, a couple of Serail ATA-150 ports and 6-channel AC’97 audio. Another version (let’s call it ICH5-RAID) will also provide us RAID support. Unfortunately, it is not said if the babe supports just RAID 0, 1 (2 ports) or also 0+1 (4 ports), but in any case it will be great yo get RAID support for almost free. According to what the Inquirer reports, the ICH5-RAID will cost only $3 more than the ordinary ICH5.

Take a look at the table that represents the price of the newcomers equipped with the ICH5 and the current lineup of Intel Pentium 4 destined core-logic products with ICH4. Pay attention that the start price of the novelties are either higher or lower compared to the initial price of the present solutions in their market segments. This is mainly caused by the fact that Intel is to utilise advanced ICH5 South Bridge with the novelties. The overall situation about the pricing is good – the new chipsets are not a lot more expensive than their predecessors, hence, Intel keeps its word about aggressive transition to 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus.

Prices (in US$) on Intel's Chipsets for the Pentium 4 Platform
Chipset	Q2, 2003	September 29, 2002	December 29, 2002	March 30, 2002
i875P	50
i850E	-	40	40	40
i850	-	38	38	38
i865PE	36
i865P	33
i845PE	-	32	30	28
i845E	-	28	26	25
i865G	41
i845GE	-	37	35	35
i845G	-	35	35	35
i845GV	-	26	25	24
i845GL	-	25	24	23
i845 B-Step	-	23	21	21

• i875P. The chipset is positioned as a high-performance solution, which should come to replace i850E and Intel E7205. It will support Pentium 4 with 800/533MHz bus and the Hyper-Threading technology. Two DDR SDRAM channels will be capable of working with PC3200/2700/2100 with ECC and also Turbo Mode (a special mode increasing the performance). Also the chipset will support AGP 8x interface and will go with an ICH5 South Bridge featuring SerialATA-150 support. Note that the newcomer is more expensive than the i850E, but less expensive than the E7205.
• i865PE. This mainstream solution will come to replace i845PE. This core logic will support Pentium 4 and Celeron CPUs with 800/533/400MHz bus and dual-channel PC3200/2700/2100 SDRAM. No ECC will be supported. Also the chipset will boast AGP 8x interface support and will go with an ICH5 South Bridge featuring SerialATA-150. The baby product definitely have big potential, as it will be a lot cheaper than the i850 and i850E, but will target performance-mainstream segment, offering really high performance in the segment.
• i865P. This is a cut-down version of the previous chipset differing from Springdale-PE by the absence of support for CPUs with 800MHz system bus and PC3200 SDRAM.
• i865G. This chipset will replace the today’s i845GE. It is none other but the already described above i865PE but with the integrated graphics core.

Chipset developers, as well as designers of RAID controllers should now reconsider their plans for the year, as Intel definitely decided to satisfy all market segments with its products and demand on competing solutions will be lower.