Introduction
Several motherboard manufacturers showed me their Pentium II boards with the upcoming Intel 440BX 100 MHz bus speed AGPset behind closed doors and curtains, but it will take a while until I can offer you first results … Intel’s revenge is feared badly. The specs of that chipset are as you know pretty much the same as the specs of the 440LX AGPset, the only difference is the bus speed of 100 MHz. Motherboard manufacturers state that the biggest problem with the high bus speed is the memory issue.
Much more interesting are all the new Socket 7 AGP chipsets that are coming up. After VIA’s Apollo VP3 chipset, which you could see used in more than 15 new motherboards from several companies, ALI is getting closer to releasing their Aladdin V AGP chipset and SiS seems to have almost finished their 5591/92 AGP chipset.
Whilst the SiS 5591/92 chipset doesn’t seem to be targeted for 100 MHz bus speed support, the ALI Aladdin V (M1541/M15X3) is meant to support 100 MHz from day one of its release. Although none of the motherboard manufacturers is having a running Aladdin V board available yet, ALI was able to show several running Aladdin V reference boards, one running a K6 300 at 100 MHz bus speed, however not with an AGP graphic card.
Aladdin V Reference Board: 100 MHz bus speed, AMD K6 300/100, PCI graphic card
Aladdin V Reference Board: 66 MHz bus speed, Pentium MMX 233, AGP graphic card
ALI is being very courageous and presented their upcoming Aladdin-Pro (M1621/M15X3) Slot One AGP chipset as well, but as far as I’ve heard there are still some licence issues to be discussed with Intel about that. Anyhow, here a picture of a running system:
Aladdin-Pro Dual Pentium II Reference Board
Further Comdex Fall 1997 news …
