MaximumPC 2005 10

Pentium 4 Chipset Showdown

FEATURES

Pentium 4/D chipsets (including the two boards we looked at) are

so rich in features that our doctor told us to cut back to one use a week. Both

support processors running 800MHz and 1,066MHz front-side buses, but only the

Intel 955X gives you full support for all of Intel’s dual-core procs. The 955X also

gives you HD Audio support with the option of a real-time Dolby Digital encoder, as

well as Matrix RAID, which lets you create multiple striped and mirrored arrays on

just two drives. The nForce4 SLI IE is no slouch, either, with its hardware firewall,

ability to use both PATA and SATA drives in one RAID array, and the option of

running two nVidia cards in SLI. WINNER: TIE

INTEL 955X: Asus

P5WD2 Premium, $225,

http://www.asus.com

COMPATIBILITY

Unfortunately for nVidia, the 955X

supports every single LGA775 processor you

can buy. You can’t say that about the nForce

SLI IE. nVidia leaves dual-core support up to the

motherboard vendor, and even on motherboards

that support dual-core, some of the slower dual-

core CPUs might not work! We have no choice

but to award this category to Intel.

WINNER: INTEL 955X

head 2 head TWO TECHNOLOGIES ENTER, ONE TECHNOLOGY LEAVES

round^1 round^2

B9 G/RD/. MAH UNG

16 MA XIMUMPC OCTOBER 2005

P

eople building Intel systems have a difficult choice of late Do you

pull the trigger on a motherboard with a reliable Intel 55X chipset

or pass it up for n6idia’s new nForce4 S,I Intel Edition chipset?

To make matters worse, the often strained relationship

between Intel and n6idia is producing peculiar incompatibilities.

Intel’s dual-core Pentium D 2, for example, won’t work with the

nForce4 S,I IE. In fact, n6idia doesn’t even officially support dual

core. And even though several Intel 55X motherboards should

work with S,I, they don’t.

To get to the bottom of the mess and finally declare a chip-

set safe for your consumption, we grabbed a pair of ,GA

boards from Asus to pit head-to-head. We figured using the same

manufacturer for both boards would eliminate manufacturing and

material inconsistencies, making it a more even fight.