The P4HT is based upon Intel’s latest desktop DDR chipset, the 845PE. Naturally that means support for all Socket-478 CPUs, including 400 and 533 MHz Pentium 4s and Celeron processors. The 845PE improves on its older sibling, the 845E, by offering official support for 333MHz DDR memory as well. In the case of both 400 and 533 MHz CPUs, DDR333 memory requires asynchronous operation between the memory and processor busses, although the added bandwidth does, in this case, outweigh the performance penalty introduced by the mismatched timings. Only 533 MHz CPUs combined with DDR266 memory can enjoy synchronous operation.

The 82845PE MCH maintains only 4X AGP support, however. Intel currently does not offer any desktop chipsets with AGP 8X support (Granite Bay is technically a workstation chipset). We should again note that ht e845PE chipset supports only 1.5V AGP signaling. Some older video cards which require 3.3V signaling over the AGP bus (such as some older 3dfx cards) will not function with the 845PE chipset.

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The 845PE chipset does enjoy the added functionality of Intel’s latest I/O Controller Hub, ICH4, which puts it a hair ahead of even the mighty 850E, which is still paired with the antiquated ICH2. ICH4 provides support for five bus-master PCI slots, 6 USB 2.0 ports, and on-board networking, as well as two ATA-100 IDE channels. Software audio is also supported, although as we’ll see later, Iwill has chosen a somewhat more sophisticated option.

Hyper-Threading is, of course, fully supported by the P4HT and 845PE chipset, although at present, you’ll have to shell out for a 3.06 GHz processor to get it.