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P35 "Bearlake": Asus P5K Deluxe and Gigabyte P35-DS3R Preview - PAGE 1
William Henning - Like +my favouritesIntel will soon be launching a new chipset for mainstream Core 2 Duo (and Core 2 Quad) processor, the much anticipated P35.
The P35 is the first chipset that will be released belonging to the "Bearlake" family - all members of which are made on a 65nm process, a which should allow for lower voltages and higher speeds. It will also bring official support for a 1333MHz FSB and DDR3 - significantly increasing the potential bandwidth between the processor, chipset and memory. The hopes of such an increase is allowing the excellent Core 2 design and future Penryn processors to better flex their digital muscles.
The P35 has a tough job ahead of it - outperforming the excellent P965 and 975X chipsets. Though neither the P965 or 975X officially supporting a 1333MHz FSB, we have been able to run at up to 2020MHz FSB in one case. Does the P35 have what it takes to outperform the current top P965/975X boards?
The P35 Northbridge provides for only one PCIe 16x slot - however vendors may implement a second PCIe 16x slot that is electrically a 4x slot, and dual channel memory, which can be configured by motherboard vendors to support either DDR2 or DDR3 modules. The FSB officially supports 800/1066/1333 MHz data rates (quad-pumped 200/266/333MHz).
P35 based motherboards with DDR3 slots will allow for memory speeds in excess of 1333MHz data rate - although this extra memory bandwidth comes at the cost of increased latencies; initial DDR3 memory modules will have a 6-6-6 or even 7-7-7-26 latencies. Frankly, we are about to go through a transition period like the start of the DDR to DDR2 switch; where the early generations of DDR2 were clearly outperformed by optimized DDR modules.
The P35 connects to an Intel Southbridge; the new ICH9R in the case of the Gigabyte P35-DS3R. The ICH9R Southbridge provides 12 USB ports, six SATA2 ports, six PCIe 1x lanes, three of which are used to provide PCIe 1x slots, a PCI bus, and connections to on-board PCIe 1x devices such as the RTL 8111B and other SATA2/IDE controllers. The BIOS chip also connects to the ICHR9, and to the audio codec and legacy (PS2. LPT & SER) port controller.
Due to non-disclosure agreements, sites are not allowed to publish benchmark results yet - however we thought we'd bring you this quick preview, just to wet your appetites for these future developments.
The P35 is the first chipset that will be released belonging to the "Bearlake" family - all members of which are made on a 65nm process, a which should allow for lower voltages and higher speeds. It will also bring official support for a 1333MHz FSB and DDR3 - significantly increasing the potential bandwidth between the processor, chipset and memory. The hopes of such an increase is allowing the excellent Core 2 design and future Penryn processors to better flex their digital muscles.
The P35 has a tough job ahead of it - outperforming the excellent P965 and 975X chipsets. Though neither the P965 or 975X officially supporting a 1333MHz FSB, we have been able to run at up to 2020MHz FSB in one case. Does the P35 have what it takes to outperform the current top P965/975X boards?
The P35 Northbridge provides for only one PCIe 16x slot - however vendors may implement a second PCIe 16x slot that is electrically a 4x slot, and dual channel memory, which can be configured by motherboard vendors to support either DDR2 or DDR3 modules. The FSB officially supports 800/1066/1333 MHz data rates (quad-pumped 200/266/333MHz).
P35 based motherboards with DDR3 slots will allow for memory speeds in excess of 1333MHz data rate - although this extra memory bandwidth comes at the cost of increased latencies; initial DDR3 memory modules will have a 6-6-6 or even 7-7-7-26 latencies. Frankly, we are about to go through a transition period like the start of the DDR to DDR2 switch; where the early generations of DDR2 were clearly outperformed by optimized DDR modules.
The P35 connects to an Intel Southbridge; the new ICH9R in the case of the Gigabyte P35-DS3R. The ICH9R Southbridge provides 12 USB ports, six SATA2 ports, six PCIe 1x lanes, three of which are used to provide PCIe 1x slots, a PCI bus, and connections to on-board PCIe 1x devices such as the RTL 8111B and other SATA2/IDE controllers. The BIOS chip also connects to the ICHR9, and to the audio codec and legacy (PS2. LPT & SER) port controller.
Due to non-disclosure agreements, sites are not allowed to publish benchmark results yet - however we thought we'd bring you this quick preview, just to wet your appetites for these future developments.
next: Gigabyte P35-DS3R »
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me fail english? that's unpossible
As for the mystery chip which you're wondering about on the Asus boards, there are some useful clues in the form of silkscreened labels on the PCB outlines near that area of the motherboard: notice "EZRAID_SET" on what looks like the PCB pads for a jumper block, as well as "SATA_E2" on what looks like the pads for another SATA port, next to "SATA6/SATA_E1", the bottom left-most SATA port.
I'm guessing, therefore, that the mystery chip is a SATA to 2-port SATA port replicator with software RAID or a SATA to 2-Port SATA storage controller with hardware RAID. You would have encountered once such example of the latter before: the Asus P5W-DH's Silicon Image 4723 hardware RAID controller, also known as ASUS EZ-Backup. The mode of operation is the same: take one SATA line from the ICH9 (SATA6 on the P5K) and split it into two, adding RAID features as well. That's why SATA6 was labelled as "SATA6/SATA_E1" on the motherboard - with the controller installed the SATA6 channel from the ICH9 would be rerouted to the controller which would then output to SATA_E1 and SATA_E2.
Going one step further, I'm guessing that the mystery chip might be a Silicon Image SiI5723 storage processor http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=103. It's originally designed for eSATA, but that just means that its signal drive is sufficiently strong to span the 2m eSATA cables, and has hot-plug support; certainly can be used for internal SATA as well.
I made this guess based on several clues:
IMHO, Asus probably designed the option to have that controller in so that some RAID functionality can still be offered on a lower-end version of the board using the vanilla ICH9 (non-R) and/or to allow for a Digital Home edition that provides for one more SATA port and one more RAID subsystem (instead of depending wholly on the Intel Storage Matrix).
That's about it I guess, but can't wait to see how DDR3 performs compared to DDR2, especially clock-for-clock... by all accounts the DDR2 performance of the P35 and P965 have been virtually identical since P35 was more about bringing more features - FSB1333, ICH9 and DDR3 - than performance to the table.
Thanks again for the nice preview!
At least you noticed the intent of the article, instead of the purloined letter 'h' :-)
As for performance, I can tell you that the GA P35-DS3R performed [****CENSORED DUE TO NDA****] except for [****DON'T YOU HATE NDA's?****] and most people [****YES I'M HAVING FUN WITH THIS****]
You'll see plenty of benchmark results as soon as I am allowed to publish them :-)