Motherboard: Intel D845WN Review :: Features

I received a marketing sample of the D845WN so the board came with no additional cables, only the board the CD manual and the rear I/O shield were included in this review package from Intel Corporation as marketing samples from them are usually not retail boxed products but promotional items lacking the usual retail goodies.

The D845WN motherboard is a Socket 478 i845 chipset based motherboard that supports the Pentium 4 Flip Chip Pin Grid Array (FCPGA) Micro PGA processors in speeds from 1.3-2.0GHz or higher as BIOS upgrades permit. This should never pose a problem as Intel keeps up with the market and supports their motherboards through many different phases so drivers and BIOS upgrades are kept pretty well current on their web site.

The i845 chipset consists of two controller hubs the 82845 Memory Controller Hub (MCH) which controls the memory and AGP 4X interface and the 82801BA I/O controller (ICH2) which makes a direct connection to the graphics and memory for faster access to the systems peripherals resulting in better performance.

Featuring support for standard 168 pin 3.3V PC133 SDRAM via its three onboard DIMM slots is a factor that will weigh in heavily in the low cost market as SDRAM is almost a give away item in the current market situation. Memory has never been cheaper in the history of computer sales so this will please many users on a tight budget who need the total cost of ownership kept to a bare minimum.

The i845 chipset supports a total of 3GB of ECC and non ECC DIMM memory with gold plated contacts. This is sufficient RAM support for most projects and most people will never even use over 256MB so the 3GB cap will not become a problem for any user. Even if the system was used strictly as an in house 3D rendering machine the D845WN can stand its ground and deliver with this much memory support.

The Intel 845 Chipset has backwards compatible support for the Ultra ATA/33 and Ultra ATA/66 transfer rates, as well as the new Ultra ATA/100 transfer rate and is the current market standard. Hard drives that support the Ultra ATA/100 transfer rates implement a higher spindle speed which makes for faster boot up and access times to your various IDE devices.

Products such as the newer 7200 RPM hard drives that are available currently take advantage of having a larger onboard buffer size that maximizes available bandwidth on the IDE channel making for much faster access and transfer rates. The D845WN has two independent IDE channels available supporting a total of four IDE devices in a two master and two slave configuration.

There are six available PCI slots built onboard the D845WN and one 4X AGP slot so you have more than ample space for your peripheral devices especially considering the board has onboard Sound Max audio support along with a built in Intel 82562ET 10/100 network adapter. Other than the video card which uses the AGP slot most business applications will not require the use of the PCI slots at all in most configurations.

This is a not a power user board in any case therefore I think this is a great board for the office and E-machine environment in which I believe along with the OEM market is where it is targeted for. Most gamers and high end enthusiasts would find this board a little bland for their tastes but many others would find the board more than adequate for their needs and should perform for them quite well in their various applications.

Sporting four USB ports on the rear I/O shield and an onboard connector for two additional inputs via an optional cable for the front panel offers good flexibility. This is a solid plus as this will allow for more devices to be connected through the USB ports without the additional cost of an external USB Hub saving those precious dollars we all love so well.

There is hardware monitoring features as well as Windows based software monitoring features which I will discuss more in the installation section of this review so make sure to read it as it contains additional photos and feature tidbits that show more of the D845WN board's software support which is quite nice.

This is a fairly feature rich board that would have been better if it had the CNR slot onboard as Intel is one of the only company right now that can actually utilize the CNR slot and the Sound Max additional CNR expansion unit that would bring more appeal to the hardcore gamer or music enthusiast. If you want to see even more details read on to the installation section, you might just find it interesting.