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Features
The Intel 915 chipset is
still pretty new, so let me tell you a little bit about what it
supports, with a little help from the Intel website.
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800/533 MHz System Bus |
Front Side Bus (FSB) support for high-performance Intel®
processors and greater system performance. |
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Hyper-Threading Technology Support |
Increased system responsiveness for multi-tasking. |
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LGA775 Socket |
LGA775 socket supports the highest performance Intel desktop
processors. |
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PCI Express buses |
PCI
Express x16 graphics delivers up to 4 GB/s per direction, 3.5
times more bandwidth than AGP8X. PCI Express x1 I/O offers 500
MB/s concurrently, over 3.5 times more bandwidth than PCI at 133
MB/s. |
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Dual-channel DDR2 or DDR |
Flexible memory support, for dual channel DDR2 533/DDR2 400 or
DDR400/DDR333 memory, in configurations of up to 4 GB RAM. |
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Direct Media Interface (DMI) |
For
I/O intensive applications, new serial bus delivers up to 2.0
GB/s concurrent bandwidth between the memory and I/O
controllers, compared to 266 MB/s with previous generation
Intel® Hub Architecture. |
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Intel® High
Definition Audio |
Support for new consumer entertainment formats such as 7.1
surround sound, Dolby* Digital, and DTS*. Audio codec support
for 192 kHz quality, multiple streams, and better voice input
for speech recognition and voice-over-IP. |
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Intel® Matrix Storage Technology
with ICH6R or RW only |
Boosts storage performance with RAID 0, while protecting your
digital memories with RAID 1, on the same disks. Advanced Host
Controller Interface (AHCI) further boosts performance with
Native Command Queuing (NCQ), and provides native hot plug for
drive swaps. |
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Serial ATA Ports (SATA/150) |
Integrated Serial ATA controller facilitates high-speed data
transfers at up to 150 MB/s for each of 4 ports. Allows easier
hard drive upgrades and expansion for new SATA optical drives. |
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Ultra ATA/100 |
Supports legacy hard drives and optical drives. |
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Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Ports |
Eight ports offer up to 40X greater bandwidth over USB 1.1, for
high-speed I/O peripherals such as digital video cameras. |
It mentions that is supports
DDR and DDR2 let's take a look at that.
There are four slots there, but two
are DDR and the other two are DDR2. Before you ask, you cannot use all
four slots at the same time.
Gigabyte also says it
supports AGP video cards, however Intel does not list that as a feature
of the 915 chipset. How is that possible? Gigabyte uses the
PCI bus to mimic an AGP bus. This doesn't work out too well and
the owners manual will tell you that it is meant as a temporary AGP
solution and that extended useage will shorten the life of your AGP
video card.
High definition audio is
another feature of the GA-81915P motherboard. This gives you 7.1
channel surround, Dolby digital and DTS. This makes gaming on your
computer sound great. The rear panel has "smart jacks" that detect
when you plug speakers in and helps you configure them. This was a
major pain for me. I had my speakers setup for 5.1, as pictured
above, and then I plugged a mic in the pink port. This drove the
smart jacks crazy as it couldn't figure out what I plugged in. I
thought instead of confusing the poor thing, I would just unplug the mic.
This really confused it and I eventually had to restart the computer
several times to keep the above pictured application from continually
popping up. Manually setting the ports to what I wanted and
disabling the unused ports did not remedy the problem. The only
thing that has seemed to help is reinstalling the drivers.
It's a little hard to see,
but Gigabyte has chosen to use the Broadcom gigabit LAN chip. This
provides dual gigabit LAN ports for your computer.
VIA was the choice for the
IDE RAID duties. The serial ATA RAID is handled by the Intel
chipset.
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