Technical Chipset Comparison

PC Chipset Comparison

A chipset is a bunch of chips that orchestrate the flow of data to and from key components of a personal computer. This includes the CPU, main memory, the secondary cache, the DMA controller, RTC, keyboard controller and any devices attached to the ISA and local buses. The chipset also controls data flow to and from hard disks and other devices connected to the IDE channels. The chipsets are integrated on to the motherboard and are not upgradeable without buying a new motherboard. The chipset is traditionally split into two components. The NorthBridge, which handles communication between the AGP bus, RAM, the processor and the SouthBridge of the chipset. The SouthBridge handles all input and output of the computer, including the PCI and ISA bus.

Although other chipset manufacturers such as VIA, SIS and Opti are now more popular, Intel and the Triton chipset were a breakthrough in the motherboard market, due to the ability of Triton to get the best of both the Pentium processor and the PCI bus, together with its built-in bus mastering EIDE support, enhanced ISA bridge and ability to handle new memory technologies like EDO and SDRAM.

During the late 1990's chipset development had become an unacceptable bottleneck. It was not Intel, but rival chipmakers that made the first move, pushing chipsets to 100 MHz. Intel responded with many chipsets, but before long lost hold on the chipset market and as a result not having a chipset that supported 133 MHz system bus speed its last range of processors were capable of. The situation was again exploited by Intel's rivals as Intel lost another footing in the market share.

Opti makes chipsets much like the original Triton series and is usually based on cheaper motherboards.
VIA are by many, considered to be the best chipset alternative to Intel and were the first mainstream chipset manufacturers to offer a 133 MHz bus.
SIS have the reputation for creating chipsets for discount boards, although many are very good. The chipset uses unified memory architecture which has the video card use the system memory instead of its own, which is not optimum in performance matters.
AMD bought rights to VIA's VP-Z chipset technology. It supports up to 2 MB L2 cache, SDRAM, UDMA and compatibility with 512 MB system memory and ECC.

I personally like Intel chipsets and processors and although I use AMD and other chipsets I know more about Intel.

Intel Chipsets

The 430 Series Chipsets

Early Triton FX chipsets, introduced in early 1995, was Intel's first and conformed to the PCI 2.0 specification and supported EDO memory, up to 128 MB and pipelined burst cache and synchronous cache technologies. It did not support SDRAM and USB. The chipset supported processors in the 75 MHz to 133 MHz range.

The Triton VX chipset conforms to the PCI 2.1 specification and supports the USB and Concurrent PCI standards. On the 430 FX a bus master, such as a disk controller would lock the PCI bus whenever it transferred data in order to have a clear flow to system memory, which interrupted other processes and was inefficient because the master would not need the full bandwidth of the PCI bus. Concurrent PCI chipsets force control of the PCI bus from an idle bus master to give other processes access on a timeshare basis.

The Triton HX chipset supports multiple processors, has been optimised for 32 bit operation, can work with a large main memory and provides error control (ECC) on the fly when parity RAM is used. The HX does not support SDRAM.

The Triton 430 TX is optimised for MMX processors and is designed for use in both desktops and laptops, however it lacked some of the features of the HX. Dynamic Power Management Architecture (DPMA) reduces overall system power consumption and offers intelligent power saving features like suspend to RAM and suspend to disk. The TX chipset also supports UDMA disk modes that enable higher throughput to and from EIDE devices to further enhance performance.

The 440 Series Chipsets

The 440 LX supported the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) that helped eliminate bottlenecks between the CPU, graphics controller and main memory. The LX also supported SDRAM and UDMA channels. The chipset also included ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), allowing quick power up and down, remote power up and temperature and fan speed sensors. The chipset also has better integration with the Pentium II capabilities such as dynamic execution and processor pipelining.

The 440 EX is based on the 440 LX and designed for use with the Celeron range of processors. It is also ACPI compliant and extends support for AGP, UDMA, USB, faster SDRAM and hardware monitoring support.

The 440 BX chipset pushed the Pentium II architecture beyond the 66 MHz bottleneck by supporting 100 MHz system and main memory buses while being backward compatible with the 66 MHz bus. The BX also supports dual processors, the ACPI standard and the 2X AGP bus.

The 800 Series Chipsets

The 810 AGPset was launched in many versions. Finally in late 1999 the 810E with support for 133 MHz system bus was released.

The 820 chipset also employs the 133 MHz system bus and AGP 4X technology, resulting in a faster overall performance to accommodate future software and hardware technology. The 820 chipset also employs a Accelerated Hub Architecture which provides support for more memory with advanced buffering and queuing, an ATA 66 drive controller, dual USB ports and a hardware random number generator.

The 850 chipset, designed for the Pentium 4, represents the next step in the Intel Hub Architecture, offering a 400 MHz system bus, RDRAM memory support, AGP X4, two USB controllers and dual ATA/100 that support faster IDE interfaces and storage devices.

PC Form Factors