Introduction

Pentium 4 finds harmony with Granite Bay Dual Channel DDR... at least on paper, we think.

The move to Dual Channel DDR technology by processor giant Intel was inevitable as ties between Intel and the RAMBUS company wind up, which many months ago had Intel Corp sell a certain number of RDRAM pieces in what was one of IT's most talked about legal agreements ever shaking the industry up quite a bit at the time.

Today Intel will announce its E7205 codename Granite Bay chipset for the Pentium 4 platform. The main highlight in the newest product to come out of Santa Clara is its Dual Channel DDR-266 memory controller, bringing the maximum theoretical system bandwidth up to 4.2GB/s compared to only 2.1GB/s of its single channel PC2100 DDR predecessor - not that it takes a mathematician to figure that out. But in all seriousness, this important figure is in-line with what the adventurous RAMBUS company has been able to provide the industry for the past year or more, without the added expensive of its ambitious RDRAM products.

Unfortunately we were not supplied with a reference sample motherboard based on the E7205 from Intel, which would have enabled us to provide you with our usual set of benchmarking results. Fortunately for us though, Amos Lee from Gigabyte Technology provided us with some documentation and pictures of their brand new Granite Bay based 8INXP motherboard (pictured below) which the Taiwanese motherboard company is also introducing today themselves.

 

Feature-packed 8INXP in all its glory