As we know, in the Q’2 of 2002 Intel plans to increase the performance of its Pentium 4 COU line as it migrates to the 533MHz Quad Pumped bus from the currently used 400MHz one. The event is preliminary reported to happen in May. Parallel to the launch of the new Pentium 4 processors Intel will announce a bunch of chipsets to support these CPUs. Among then there will be two updates (i845E and i850E) and absolutely new i845G/i845GL with an embedded graphics engine.

The characteristics of these chipsets are given below:

	i850E	i845E	i845G	i845GL
FSB	400/533MHz	400/533MHz	400/533MHz	400MHz
Memory type	PC1066/PC800 RDRAM	PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM	PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM PC133 SDRAM	PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM PC133 SDRAM
Supported memory	2GB	2GB	2GB	2GB
Integrated graphics	-	-	+	+
AGP	AGP 4x	AGP 4x	AGP 4x	-
Packaging	615-pin OLGA	593-pin FCBGA	760-pin FCBGA	760-pin FCBGA
ICH	ICH3	ICH4	ICH4	ICH4
ATA	ATA/100	ATA/100	ATA/100	ATA/100
USB	1.1	1.1/2.0	1.1/2.0	1.1/2.0
Packaging	360-pin EBGA	421-pin MBGA	421-pin MBGA	421-pin MBGA
Price	$40	$41	$46	$35

The main difference between i845E/850E and their predecessors, i845/i850, will be the support for 533MHz Quad Pumped bus. Apart from that, i850E will have official support for PC1066 RDRAM which is already manufactured by Samsung. In dual-channel mode it provides 4.2GB/sec bandwidth which is equivalent to that of 533MHz Quad Pumped bus. Intel 845E will be equipped with a new South Bridge, ICH4, enhanced with an extra USB 2.0 hub.

As for i845G, the situation is more complicated. This chipset is i945E with a non-locked PC133 SDRAM controller and embedded graphics engine. The graphics engine of the new chipset will be all new. Intel says that its performance will be 4-5 times higher than that of i815 engine. At the same time, the mainboard makers don’t share Intel’s optimism. The suppose i845G graphics will be comparable to GeForce2 MX400.

Anyway, i845G graphics engine will be much smarter than any other embedded engine. Firstly, we’d like to point out tile rendering architecture, support for 32bit color modes, possibility to overlay 4 textures per tick and bump-mapping. Speaking about the 2D abilities of i845G graphics, they were significantly broadened as well. Thanks to higher frequency of embedded RAMDAC (350MHz) the top resolution of i845 graphics engine has grown till 2048x1536.

The light version of i845G, i845GL, will be intended for value Celeron based systems with new Celeron CPUs based on Willamatte-128 core. For this reason i845GL won’t have external AGP card support and 533MHz Quad Pumped bus.

The further outlooks for Pentium 4 chipsets evolution is vague. It is only known that another Pentium4 chipset sill come out in the first part of 2003 and will support CPUs based on 0.09-micron Prescott die with Hyper-Threading technology. this chipset is code-named Springdale. It will also support AGP 8x and will have a new ICH5 South Bridge. As compared with ICH4, ICH5 will also support Serial-ATA protocol. Besides, Springdale will have some LAN abilities like Wireless LAN and Gigabit Ethernet. These abilities will be probably implemented with the help of a single companion chip.

A mystery about Springdale is which memory type it will support. According to various sources, it may be DDR333, DDR II or dual-channel DDR. But as the mass production of DDR II is laid off till 2004, Springdale will most probably support DDR333. As for dual-channel DDR, Intel plans to use it in another chipset, Granite Bay, intended for workstations.

Perhaps, the new chipset launch scheme will be somewhat updated at the presently held IDF.