Chaintech 9PJL2 Silver Review - Intel I865 Reviewed

Intel S478 by jmke @ 2004-02-01

Chaintech sends us their latest Springdale motherboard for review. We put it up against an Abit IS7 and Chaintech's own Canterwood solution, how well can it hold up? Find out in this review!

In the box

This is the second P4 motherboard we are reviewing this month from Chaintech, last week we took a look at their Canterwood (I875) motherboard solution and this week we pit it up against their own Springdale (I865) powered main board.

The Springdale motherboard is basically a Canterwood without the "PAT" (Performance Acceleration Technology) onboard. To find out what differentiates the I865 from the I875 I suggest this fine article by Liquid3D @ XS

to understand what the 865PE is, we first have to understand what it is not, and it is not an autonomous design. It doesn't have its own identity, in that it was never designed from the "wafer" up to be an 865PE. It's not even a "version" of the i875P by design, it's a failed i875P.

Don't expect Prescott support on these Springdale motherboards though, only some Canterwood motherboards out there will be able to support the Prescott CPU when flashed with the latest BIOS.

Update
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According to the feature list of this mainboard at this website:
~ Intel 865PE+ICH5
~ Dual Channel DDR400 x4
~ Integrated 6-CH Audio & RTL8101L LAN
~ S-ATA150 + ATA100, AGP8X, 5xPCI
~ ATX, 800FSB, USB V2.0 x8
~ Support Hyper-Threading Technology
~ Prescott Ready

it seems with the latest BIOS this motherboard will be able to run a Prescott CPU, but beware of mainboards which are not supposed to support the Prescott to begin with.
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On with the show! The 9PJL2 Silver larger then average box and includes the following goodies:

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2 black- ATA & 1 black floppy-cable

Sata & Sata power pass-through cable

External 5.1-Channel AC'97 Codec powered CMC card

Manual and software/driver CDs

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Specifications :

2 ATA and 2 SATA connectors give you the possibility of connecting up to 6 storage devices to this motherboard, it also includes a separate CMR (Chaintech Multimedia Riser) Card which gives you the full possibility of connecting a 5.1 surround box set!

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Unfortunately we don't have an integrated IEEE1394/Firewire chipset on this board, something the 9PJL2 big brother, the 9CJS ZENITH, does have!

Here are the official specs:

Form Factor	ATX (305mm x 244mm)
CPU	Supports Intel Socket 478 CPU with Hyper-Threading Technology Supports Intel Pentium4/Celeron system bus at 400/533/800MHz
Chipset	Intel 865PE + ICH5, supports Hyper-Threading Technology
Main Memory	Four 184-pin DDR DIMMs up to 4GB Supports Dual-Channel DDR266/333/400 memory
Expansion Slots	One 1.5V AGP slot for 4X/8X AGP Five 32-Bit PCI slots (v2.2 compliant) One CMR (Chaintech Multimedia Riser) for Chaintech Multimedia Card (CMC 5.1)
Audio Subsystem	With external high quality 5.1-Channel AC'97 Codec Complete software driver support for Windows OS Supports S/PDIF out
Video Subsystem	Video 4X/8X AGP
IDE	Build-in ICH5 supports 2 UltraDMA-33/66/100 IDE ports
Embedded USB Controller	Build-in ICH5 supports total 8 USB 2.0/1.1 ports Supports USB 2.0 High-Speed Device @480 Mb/s Transfer Rates
On Board Super I/O Controller	ITE 8712 LPC Super I/O with system monitoring hardware 2 temperatures sensing for CPU and system 3 Fan speed monitoring (CPU, System and Northbridge) One FDD connector supports up to 2.88MB
Boot-Block Flash ROM	Award system BIOS supports PnP, APM, DMI, ACPI, & Multi-device booting features
Software	Driver CD (Chipset Autodetect) Value Pack 2003 APOGEE Overclocking Utility
Other Feature	Back panel I/O connector One PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard port Four USB ports and one RJ45 connector Two 9-pin D-Sub male Serial ports One 25-pin D-Sub female Parallel port Audio I/O jacks (Line-in, Line-out and Mic-in) On-board LAN controller On-board LAN chip RTL8100C supports 10/100Mb Fast Ethernet On-board SATA Controller Build-in ICH5 supports 2 Serial ATA devices for the highest data transfer rates (1.5Gbps burst) Internal I/O connectors Four 3x1 pin fan connectors Two 5x2 pin USB connectors for additional 4 USB ports 3x1 pin wake on LAN connector with housing 3x1 pin wake on Modem connector with housing Two 4x1 pin CD-in connectors with housing on CMC5.1 4x1 pin Aux-in connector with housing on CMC5.1 9x2 pin front panel connector 5x2 pin front side audio connector 20 pin ATX Power connector 4 pin ATX 12V Power connector

Performance

Testbed:

JMke's Test Setup
CPU	Intel P4 2.4 "C"
Mainboard	* Chaintech 9PJL2 Silver * Chaintech CT-9CJS * Abit IS7
Cooling	Zalman CNPS7000-CU
Memory	2 * 256Mb PC3700 OCZ Rev.2
Video	nVidia Geforce 4 Ti4600

Performance :

We ran the benchmarks with 2 different settings, one time at default FSB speed of 200, the memory timings were set at CL2 2-3-5. Then we increased the FSB to 250 with memory timings at CL2.5 3-3-7. PAT was auto-enabled during all tests.

Interesting to note is that the 2 Chaintech motherboards put the FSB at 202.9 when running at default speeds.



	9PJL2@200	CT-CJS@200	IS7@200	9PJL2@250	CT-CJS@250	IS7@245
1024x768	12310	12468	12643	13538	13811	13555
640x480	14334	14749	15000	16534	16685	16288



	9PJL2@200	CT-CJS@200	IS7@200	9PJL2@250	CT-CJS@250	IS7@250
1024x768	251	260,4	257,5	288,7	297.5	287,3
640x480	267,3	280,8	276,2	326,5	339.9	323,3

Sisoft Sandra 2004

	9PJL2@200	CT-CJS@200	IS7@200	9PJL2@250	CT-CJS@250	IS7@250
CPU MIPS	7579	7509	7433	9293	9331	9313
FPU MFLOPS	3049	3049	3012	3754	3752	3772
iSSE2 MFLOPS	5415	5429	5355	6675	6676	6682
iSSE2 Int	18648	18646	18436	22985	22986	23065
iSSE2 Float	26813	25832	26632	32977	31783	32340
RAM Int	4542	4852	4903	5557	5862	5564
RAM Float	4535	4789	4904	5538	5939	5542



	9PJL2@200	CT-CJS@200	IS7@200	9PJL2@250	CT-CJS@250	IS7@245
CPU	6050	6042	6017	7548	7473	7303
Memory	7573	8062	8963	9363	9910	9104



	9PJL2@200	CT-CJS@200	IS7@200	9PJL2@250	CT-CJS@250	IS7@245
Global	3782	3784	3763	4523	4561	4488
CPU	3782	3714	3797	4523	4660	4508
Memory	4113	4252	4322	5088	5205	4912
Graphics	3087	3091	3109	3158	3152	3143

Perf. remarks & Board Layout

Performance remarks :

As you can see from the benches on the previous page, the I865 is on par with the I875 when running at default speeds, the Abit IS7 even outruns the competition thanks to its built in GAT (Game Accelerator Technology), or a *hacked* PAT. But when we push the motherboards up to 250 MHz we see the Canterwood pull ahead. The 9PJL2 was able to reach 250 MHz stable and showed first signs of instabilities around ~255 MHz. The Abit IS7 on the other hand had troubles even running 250Mhz, no matter what RAM was used, or BIOS settings disabled, the IS7 refused to run any game benchmarks when overclocked to 250Mhz, that's why you see some benchmarks with the IS7 running at 245Mhz.

When mentioning maximum FSB speed, this is always in 1:1, when using a divider 5:4 or 3:2 the motherboards can go higher (my Asus P4C800 reaches 300+ in 5:4 mode but doesn't do 270 in 1:1). With recent memory modules which can reach 275 MHz at stock voltage, this is quite important if you want the best performance from your P4 setup!

The Chaintech's I865 does not have a *hacked* PAT on their boards, and the difference with the Canterwood is noticeable in the graphs, but overall it can hardly be called huge. And you wouldn't notice the difference in everyday usage.

Chaintech includes an overclocking utility "APOGEE":

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You can change FSB/PCI/AGP speeds, increase/decrease voltage to your CPU, DDR and AGP port! A quite impressive utility and very easy in use, although the overclocking headroom was limited with this Springdale motherboard when used with a P4 2.4 “C” processor, but when you buy a new CPU (3.2Ghz for example) then you will have a hard time to get that CPU running @ 250Mhz FSB, unless you apply some extreme cooling.

General Impression :

The board layout is well thought out, and I didn't encounter any serious issues when installing this motherboard. All wiring is kept away from the CPU socket area and components are well distributed around the board to allow easy access:

The BIOS reset jumper is easily accessible at the bottom of the main board next to the "HD-Led/Reset/Power On/..." connectors:

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Installing DDR ram without having to remove your video card is possible, although it is a tight fit:

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The large space left between the Northbridge and CPU socket means we can install any heatsink on there without having to worry about it not fitting:

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On to the conclusion ->

Conclusion

Conclusion :

Chaintech put an attractive price-tag on their Springdale motherboard, it can had found for less than $90!. This makes it an interesting deal if you are building a new system and want a good price/performance ratio.

I had no issues with this motherboard and it worked straight out the box, overclocking went smooth and easy, although it won't give you insane FSB speeds. If Firewire/IEEE1394 would have been integrated into this board I'd be even happier :). The 9PJL2 is a solid performer able to keep up with the Canterwood boards and its closest Springdale rivals.

PRO
Solid performance
Plug & Play overclocking
Attractively priced

CON
No onboard IEEE1394/Firewire

I would like to thank Danny @ Chaintech.nl for the review sample.

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