Early this year Intel announced a range of new desktop chipsets designed for their Pentium 4 processor. One of these chipsets was a mid-range Dual-Channel DDR400 solution aimed at bringing a little value to the high-end market segment. This chipset was named Springdale and goes by the codename of i865PE. This chipset has drawn a great deal of attention as a result of it being such a high performance part, with loads of up to date features. Another factor that has helped the i865PE become a successful chipset is its affordable price tag. For these reasons a large majority of motherboard makers have focused there primary products on the 865PE chipset.

Just like the i875P the same two Southbridge chips are available for the 865PE chipset being the ICH5 and the ICH5R. The ICH5R supports the RAID 0 function for Serial ATA hard drives, while the ICH5 simply supports two Serial ATA hard drives. There is very little price difference between the ICH5 and ICH5R Southbridge chips so it would make sense that manufacturers went with the ICH5R. Although the 865PE is nothing new, and over the past several months I have tested numerous motherboards based on this chipset, it's still one of the most popular solutions for the Pentium 4 processor today.

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That said, I have yet another two new 865PE (Springdale) motherboards from Albatron and DFI. As you are about to find out, both boards offer an abundance of features and should offer some remarkable overclocking results. Despite all the imbedded i865 chipset features manufacturers are still adding their own personal touches, as you will see. Albatron have adopted a few impressive features such as the ICH5R Southbridge and the VIA Envy 24PT 8-Channel Audio chip offering very low processor usage. DFI on the other hand, chose different solutions such as the ICH5 Southbridge and C-Media CMI9739a 6-Channel Audio chip. These are just some of the many features found on both these i865PE motherboards.

It has recently become extremely important for manufacturers to add special features in an effort to make their product unique. Manufacturers such as Gigabyte and Abit have done an excellent job of this, as Gigabyte continues to add new innovative features and Abit has their impressive MAX product line. Both Albatron and DFI have developed their own ideas in an effort to add uniqueness to their products. I believe it is acceptable to say that both these manufacturers are primarily focused of delivering value based products.

This being the case, Im not surprised to see both manufacturers making such an effort to differentiate their i865PE based products. The performance margins are very minimal between the i875P and i865PE chipsets. Although Intel still denies the ability to enable PAT in i865PE chipsets, motherboard manufacturers know otherwise. However, Intel has warned manufacturers against enabling PAT on i865PE motherboards, so they have devised other methods to remain competitive. Take ASUS for example, the have simply renamed PAT to Memory Acceleration Mode, claiming it as their own built-in BIOS enhancement. Dont be surprised to find that both Albatron and DFI have done a similar thing.