In determining the overall performance of the Intel 845G chipset, we have selected the SiS 645DX and i850E as the main points of reference. Both of these chipsets can run the new 533 MHz Pentium 4 processors, with the 645DX and i850E supporting DDR333 and PC800/PC1066 RDRAM memory respectively. To give a full cross-section, we've spiced up most of the benchmark charts with scores taken with Intel's older DDR Pentium 4 chipset, the i845D.
Due to the different front-side bus support of the various chipsets, the Pentium 4-2.4B 533 MHz is being used for the i845G, i850E and SiS 645DX, while the standard 100 MHz Pentium 4-2.4 GHz is employed in all i845D testing. This is important to note when comparing the i845D scores, as the i845G also gets the benefit of the 533 MHz front-side bus.
Our basic reference video card is the GeForce4 Ti 4600, which not only allows the highest 3D game speed, but also lets each of the platforms have as much performance headroom as possible. Since the i845G features integrated 3D video as well, this has also been tested using a few popular 3D games and benchmarks. Its performance certainly won't have you tossing your GeForce4 into the trash, but we'll see if the video portion at least allows playable framerates for the less performance-oriented uses.
The i845G motherboard provided for this review is the Intel D845GBV. It includes all the integrated video, LAN and audio features of the i845G, and comes in a large ATX design. This board has a 1 AGP/6 PCI/1 CNR slot design, along with the standard two DIMM sockets. Connectors for one floppy and two IDE connectors round out the very basic design, and the board itself requires the two standard and 12V power cords found on ATX 2.03 power supplies.
The D845GBV looks quite similar to previous i845 reference boards, with the only noticeable change being a far more serious heatsink present on the i845G Northbridge. The System BIOS has also been improved a bit. Intel has usually left out any form of tweaking options from their BIOS designs, but with the presence of integrated graphics and the need for increased memory performance, full control of memory timings and speeds are now featured.
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