abt "Taiwanese mainboard manufacturers worried about slow 915 uptake"

[Bill Rose]

The front page article says:
"Intel's new 915 chipsets have introduced three new technologies simultaneously, without any kind of backward compatibility:
- DDR2.
- LGA socket 775.
- PCI-e."

In fact, the 915 series support DDR and DDR2 memory.

[bluetooth]

For myself,I would go for boards that takes in DDR as DDR2 doesn't prove to be much of use anyway.

For those who depends on ref design, it will be as mentioned - DDR2, PCI-E and S775. It is not as affordable compared to the AMD solutions.

[AndyB]

Originally posted by Bill Rose:
...
the 915 series support DDR and DDR2 memory.

It's obvious I am referring to the technologies and not to the chipset itself. Yeah, the 915 is also compatible with standard PCI and so what?

Gigabyte and other manufacturers have "Combo" 915 boards that accept both types of RAM. Still, these boards don't sell well, in fact they are even less popular than their DDR2-only counterparts.

The simple fact is that you can't insert a DDR RAM stick in a DDR2 slot.

Same applies to PCI-e vs. AGP+PCI and Socket 775 vs Socket 478. The new standards are not backwards compatible.

I think the point of the news item is clear: trying to impose three new non-backwards compatible technology standards in a mainstream chipset launch was a bad idea for Intel.

[Bill Rose]

My point was obviously that you said "without any kind of backward compatibility:", which is not true as most manufactures have 915 boards that support DDR1. ABIT's 915 board even supports only DDR, and I'm pretty sure these boards sell better than their DDR2 counterparts, as they are cheaper.

"The new standards are not backwards compatible."
this is true, but it's beside my point.

"I think the point of the news item is clear: trying to impose three new non-backwards compatible technology standards in a mainstream chipset launch was a bad idea for Intel."
Intel only imposes DDR2 on their high-end chipset (which is not that great idea), the 925. the 915 chipset does not impose DDR2.

[AndyB]

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/guides/ddrvsddr2/p1.htm

Nice comparison of DDR vs. DDR2.

[AndyB]

Originally posted by Bill Rose:
...ABIT's 915 board even supports only DDR, and I'm pretty sure these boards sell better than their DDR2 counterparts, as they are cheaper.
...

i915 boards are not selling well at all, and that includes Abit's lineup.

As shown by Bluetooth in the article I point to above, DDR2 has no real performance advantage over DDR.

Also, according to what many websites have reported, Prescott on socket 775 is not faster than Northwood on socket 478 at the same clock, and doesn't overclock better either.

Finally, PCI-e 16x graphics cards have not shown a real performance advantage over AGP 8X for present generation GPUs.

So not only are the technologies found on the i915 chipset not backwards compatible, they do not provide any performance advantage. And the i915 chipset is more expensive than previous generation i865/i875.

For consumers, this is a very bad value proposition: more expensive mainboard forces upgrade of all major components without any performance advantage.

[Bill Rose]

That's fine. My only point in creating this thread was to say that the 915 chipset does not force the use of DDR2 memory, which is something one may easily think after reading that news bit.

[bluetooth]

Bill Rose is correct provided the manufacturers include a 2 socket type, 2 dimm type and 2 AGP/PCI-E combo board. That will be true then.