I think I had no problem with HT on 645DX. That was on Gigabyte board though.

HT works on regular 850 too, probably not on Gigabyte though, due to strict CPU limits in BIOS they had back then. Overall, 850E was marketing gimmick to sell relabeled north bridges, which were "certified" to work at 133 Mhz.

i865PE is not the same as i875P, because Intel artificially gimped memory controller. But some manufacturers, like ASUS, fixed it to work more or less like 875.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-03-21, 04:12:

I think I had no problem with HT on 645DX. That was on Gigabyte board though.

Was it the GA-8ST-L? I noticed it supports ddr only but it has the universal agp slot.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-03-21, 04:12:

HT works on regular 850 too, probably not on Gigabyte though, due to strict CPU limits in BIOS they had back then. Overall, 850E was marketing gimmick to sell relabeled north bridges, which were "certified" to work at 133 Mhz.

So is this normal that the 850 works with 133 mhz bus despite not being officially supported? Which 850 motherboard do you have? Also the gigabyte only has usb 1.1 ports, so the asus is a step up.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-03-21, 04:12:

i865PE is not the same as i875P, because Intel artificially gimped memory controller. But some manufacturers, like ASUS, fixed it to work more or less like 875.

The so called PAT technology? So in the end they are the same but Intel found that so called feature to launch another chipset?

Was it the GA-8ST-L?

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-8ST800-rev-1x#ov

Which 850 motherboard do you have?

Abit TH7II-RAID. 133Mhz was perfectly trivial to achieve even on Socket 423.

So in the end they are the same but Intel found that so called feature to launch another chipset?

875P was designed for entry-level workstations, it also has ECC and SMP support (only on Socket 604), which also could be artificial gimping, arguably, or "segmentation". But only memory controller tweaks were proven to be artificial on practice.

Anyway, unless you have specific board with specific option enabled - 865 will be slower. So yeah, you could call it as different chipset in your testing.

I began the roundup.
Unlucky some benchmarks don't work as expected, like sisoft sandra 2003 doesn't work for the ram benchmark and serious sam 2 doesn't has a builtin benchmark.
So i'm looking for some other benchmarks since now on windows I was able to use just 3dmark 2001 and comanche 4

no via chipsets? i still run a p4 2.8ghz system as a file/backup server. it has 4 massive 320gb ide drives striped on it. it's pretty zippy with ddr2 667 ram. wish it had better than sata v1 for the ssd.

biostar p4m90-m4 (matx), socket 478 400/533/800 (p4, celeron d, no willamette), via p4m900 chipset, ddr2 533/667, pci-e 16x/1x, 2x sata v1, 2x udma133, onboard video/audio

If we're already mentioning via chipsets...
Being an Intel fanboy, I was surprised at how pleasant it was to work on Jetway's P4XFCU board (VIA P4X266E chipset 400/533 FSB).

Most VIA chipset for Intel P4 platform suck and can't compete even with SiS.

Any 845/848 chipsets ?

Those are the motherboard I actually have, I may obtain a i865pe motherboard but that's it...

Those suggestions are surely interesting, I'm doing this comparison to check the performance difference more than test compatibility with different hardware more than compatibility or overclock wise. My goal is to see how is the performance using the supported chipset features.
Most of the chipsets won't support the dual channel but I can add the single\dual channel comparison for the motherboars who have the feature (later sis chipset if the motherboard works reliably and the intel 875/865PE). I can do the same with HT on and off.

That's the actual stuff I decided to use as benchmark suite:
Dos: 3D Bench 1.0c Chris 3D 640 PC Player 640 PC Player 640x16bit LFB Doom Quake 640.
Why dos benchmarks you ask? Because most of non intel chipset has crippled dos performances.

Windows XP: 3dmark 2001SE Comanche 4 CodeCreatures
If you have any suggestion about what to add for directx 9 it's welcome, I'd use 3dmark 2003 but I prefer actual games.

I also use everest to check the memory speed: Ram Read Ram Write Ram Copy Ram Latency

About the motherboard audio capabilities it's a very interesting suggestion but I wouldn't know how to do it, is there a benchmark for the audio? Consider that I actually keep the integrated audio (and anything else I won't need like lan etc) disabled from bios.

2 problems ahead: the second sis motherboar apparently doesn't work.
The gigabyte which was working with a selected cpu at 133 mhz bus won't work anymore, it only goes up to 120 mhz.

So I almost ended the comparison (at least for now) as I feared the second sis motherboard had issues so no chance to test it, I sent it to a guy hoping he will be able to troubleshoot and repair it.
I will acquire a intel 865PE motherboard.
I was able to test with 133 mhz the first rambus motherboard, despite I was using 1066 rambus I had to test it to pc800 otherwise it wasn't booting.
Asus P4C800-E doesn't support the ddr400 mhz if the cpu has 133 fsb like mine. So here is what I did: installed super fast ddr I had (like ddr 533 or something like that) and used the fastest time as possible, I do wonder if it is fair though since rambus had no speed options and such memories were not so common back in time, I will probably test them to jedec timings too. I was wondering if it could be interesting to test the memory bandwitdth at 200 mhz (ddr 400) without any cpu benchmark. I have to check if I have a 3ghz 800 cpu but I probably don't.
I'm quite happy from the results I got, it will shot something interesting, but that's for later.

Should all 865-chipsets support DDR400, no?, At least all my motherboards back than was. I had plenty of time with P4 in early-2000s both Northwood and Prescott.

They do but with 800 mhz bus cpu (200), I do not know if the 865 is able to run the ddr at 200 mhz with a 533 bus cpu. I'm using a Pentium 4 3.06 ghz (HT) for compatibility purpose (most of the motherboard tested were released before the 800 mhz cpus).

So for now the roundup is over, when I will be able to acquire other chipsets I will update the topic.

ECS P4S5A-DX+: officially this motherboard doesn't support the pc166 for sdram, but you know, ecs is ecs, so I was able to switch from ddr and sdr, without entering the bios and ram were running at 166mhz, I wasn't able to get this info with everest, cpuz or anything else, but I did try to enter the bios and set the memory to 133 and result were lower. Them otherboard has a voice to enable htt but it won't work, also it has notorious slowness during boot (I will buy another one to check if it's my motherboard that is somewhat flaky or what), for this motherboard I tried several bios trying to solve the slow boot issue without results. Performance wise is... bleah... I do wonder how it can give so slow memory performance despite using the same DDR333 of the Intel 775P.

Gigabyte GA-8ITXE: motherboard can handle 133 mhz fsb but it's quite sketchy, I had to increase the fsb with little steps, the bus frequency is quite limited (it jumps from 120 to 133). Despite I was using Rambus 1066 I wasn't able to use 133 and 400, but it worked fine with 300. I also took care of modify the bios, I will attach it down there, there is the latest version (F4), a version with updated microcodes (they gave me better stability with 133 mhz, labelled as F5) and a version where I unlocked hidden voices in the bios, there are some interesting settings but this bios needs a proper clear cmos to work fine, I won't advice to use it if you don't have an eeprom programmer. It's not a bad motherboard but it lacks usb2 and using the usb drive was very slow. It doesn't support the HT.

Asus P4T533-C: Nice motherboard, first on the round up to support ht, I found it very stable. Probably one of the best motherboard for a rambus platform?

Asus P4C800-E: Very good motherboard, I noticed that there is a weird thing about it, the latest beta bios contained 2 versions of the same microcode, they are also very updated (just once need to be updated). Motherboard doesn't support ddr400 if used with 533 QP cpu, but I guess it's a limit of the chipset more than the motherboard itself.

General thoughts.

The results with * on pc player bench it's because it showed graphical glitches. Generally speaking what was proved in other topics here in vogons intel motherboards are the best for dos performance, it is notorious that via chipsets are slower, now we can see that even SiS chipset too is slower on dos.
Pentium 4 is definitely memory bandwitdh hungry. The difference between SDR and DDR is jperformance wise impressive.
HT it's an hit or miss as showed from review back in time. When enabled shows lower performance on 3dmark, higher on Comanche 4 and the same on Codecreatures.
I also did some memory benchmarks with ddr400 but I didn't put them on the table, the main advantage over rambus is the dual channel feature (and lower cost back in time) but I really do wonder, where is your DDR god now? If Rambus were developed they would have been better than ddr. Unlucky the intel i850e isn't so overcklocking friendly and there aren't any timing options for rambus other than a "turbo" option in the bios, which is visible on asus motherboard and hidden in the gigabyte vanilla bios.

I think some of your DOS results are gimped by forced Vsync, because you've used ATi card.

Well if they are it is for all of them.
The inconsistent results on PC player bench at 16 bit are due the LFB which wasn't used (despite being active) on most of the chips except for I875. When I got inconsistent results I redid the benchmark rebooting the machine but they were the same :\

Impressive comparison and nice results for the Intel chipsets. I see you put o lot of work in this comparative so congrats!
2 things:
1. as someone posted above VIA chipsets should not be overlooked; especially VIA PT880 which is the last to support socket 478 CPU's. I got Abit VT7 and just in 3d mark 2001 in performs right in between Intel 865pe and Intel 875p which is pretty impressive. I think the fact that VIA supports all processors with FSB 400,533,800 on the same chipset is the killer deal - for example I can not run Willamette in Intel 875p.
2. the video card is very good - in the sense that it is a collector item today - but from the performance point of view is not the best for comparing chipsets. The processor, video card, memory should be the best available in order to see the performance of a particular chipset.
Asus P4C800 series attained legendary status in the retro community because most people consider it the best socket 478 platform; it is supposed to have some optimizations that put it above all other boards! Even Phil mentioned it in his Intel vs AMD season 1 series.

nd22 wrote on 2023-03-31, 12:49:

Impressive comparison and nice results for the Intel chipsets. I see you put o lot of work in this comparative so congrats! 2 t […]
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Impressive comparison and nice results for the Intel chipsets. I see you put o lot of work in this comparative so congrats!
2 things:
1. as someone posted above VIA chipsets should not be overlooked; especially VIA PT880 which is the last to support socket 478 CPU's. I got Abit VT7 and just in 3d mark 2001 in performs right in between Intel 865pe and Intel 875p which is pretty impressive. I think the fact that VIA supports all processors with FSB 400,533,800 on the same chipset is the killer deal - for example I can not run Willamette in Intel 875p.
2. the video card is very good - in the sense that it is a collector item today - but from the performance point of view is not the best for comparing chipsets. The processor, video card, memory should be the best available in order to see the performance of a particular chipset.
Asus P4C800 series attained legendary status in the retro community because most people consider it the best socket 478 platform; it is supposed to have some optimizations that put it above all other boards! Even Phil mentioned it in his Intel vs AMD season 1 series.

1) I had a Asrock P4V88+ some time ago but I remember it was far from being impressive at least from the performance point of view. I tried to get one but the seller wanted a crazy amount of money, so no thanks. I will add it to the comparison if I will be able to get one for cheap.

2) It may not be the right card but it was the fastest I had which was compatible with all the motherboards, I also have a Radeon HD3850 but it doesn't work on the ecs motherboard. So there isn't much I could do other than get a x800 or a x1x00 but again they are crazy expensive (and i'm not sure if the latter one would be compatible with ecs board).

I remember that I did a memory comparison between the Asus P4C800 and I was far from being impressed from the performance difference, they was almost the same, I remember I talked about it with a vogonian, I should have the result somewhere. I look forward to get the motherboard with Intel 765PE, we may get some interesting results.

Yeah,VIA PT880 is decent, but everything that came before can be rated from garbage to mediocre. All while humble SiS 645DX can reach i850 level of performance with DDR333.