The 82815 GMCH is the first Intel product designed to use PC133 CAS-2 SDRAM. This extra bandwidth should definitely boost performance over the old 440BX, though we don't expect it to match the performance of the i820 matched with PC800 RDRAM. We must point out that we did experience some difficulties with our i815E motherboard and most pieces of PC133 SDRAM. Intel informed us that they only managed to get the board to work with Micron memory, though we did manage to get it working with Wintec PC133 CAS-2 SDRAM using Siemens devices.
The 82815 GMCH is only capable of using up to 512MB of SDRAM. This is probably a measure by Intel to keep the i815 and i815E from harming i820 and i820E sales too much. Unfortunately, this also limits the usefulness of the chipsets. While single CPU systems rarely need more than 256MB of SDRAM, dual-CPU systems often need more. Realistically, only a miniscule fraction of users will buy 512MB of SDRAM, especially with prices rising like they are, and an even smaller portion will want more. Still, the added flexibility of a higher limit would have been nice.
The 82815 GMCH carries Intel's old and slow 4x AGP video core on-chip. This is the same graphics core that comes on the i810E. It is an adequate core for normal 3D usage and low-end 3D usage, but it is in no way a top or even mid-pack performer. In order to improve graphics performance, the graphics core can be used with 4MB 133MHz display cache installed into the AGP slot. A nice feature of this graphics setup is that there are riser cards available for DVO and TV-out. Another saving grace is that it supports hardware motion compensation for watching DVDs.
But if you are truly concerned with video performance, the 82815 GMCH gives you an option to buy an external AGP 4x solution. This is in sharp contrast to the i810 series, which had no AGP 4x slot and was mostly limited to slow integrated video or moderately fast PCI accelerators like the Voodoo3. This expansion slot gives users the ability to turn systems using the 82815 GMCH into powerful gaming machines. We like that!
The 82815 GMCH needs to be matched to an ICH to complete the chipset. As we mentioned before, i815 is the matching of the Intel 82815 GMCH to the Intel 82801AA ICH, also known as just plain ICH. And i815E is the matching of the Intel 82815 GMCH to the Intel 82801BA ICH, also known as ICH2. So the question becomes, what are the differences between ICH and ICH2? Well, there are several.