The 3 Series Chipset

Like NVIDIA’s nForce 680i platform, Intel’s 3-series is a two chip chipset. Both have 12 USB 2.0 and 6 SATA2 ports with eSATA (external SATA) support and both chipsets have high definition audio provided by a Realtek codec. Intel provides Gigabit Ethernet as well.

One feature that sets the 3 series chipset apart from others is the integration of DDR3 memory. This feature is completely unique to the 3 series and Intel for now. AMD is scheduled to integrate DDR3 in 2008.

Intel’s fast memory access is designed to increase system performance by optimizing memory bandwidth. Latency is also reduced as well. You will see in our benchmarks that Intel does accomplish this, even though it did not help gaming tests. From their tests, the increase looks huge, but in fact the 945G is Intel’s slowest chipset. Fast memory access technology was first introduced in Intel’s P965 chipset last year; this, combined with DDR3’s 8-bit prefetch buffer (compared to four bits in DDR2) should help to increase P35’s performance when paired with DDR3 memory.

DDR3

The Intel 3 series is the first chipset to support DDR3 memory. Intel was the first to push DDR2 forward as well. Officially Intel’s P35 chipset is designed for speeds up to 1066MHz, but motherboard and memory manufacturers are already pushing speeds of 1333MHz and the technology will eventually scale to clock speeds of 1600MHz. DDR3 also runs cooler and uses less power. Standard 1066MHz DDR3 modules require only 1.5V of juice, that’s 0.3V less than DDR2-800, and 1.0V less than DDR.

Of course, like DDR2, performance DDR3 will require more voltage depending on the speed, chip type, and timings.

Like DDR2, it also has 240 pins, but the DIMMS are incompatible with one another because the grooves in between pins are placed elsewhere. This means that you will not be able to use DDR2 and DDR3 memory in the same slots.

Here is a DDR3 kit running at 1333MHz. It was supplied to us by Kingston and is their top of the line HyperX series performance memory. This memory is rated for PC3-11000 (1375MHz) at 1.7V and at the high timings of 7-7-7-20. While these numbers are extremely high, these HyperX DDR3-1375 modules support the lowest latencies on the market, other 1333MHz modules run at timings of 9-9-9-24.

In comparison the fastest DDR2 tops out at 1200MHz (and typically require over 2.3V), though they run at much lower 5-5-5-15 timings. The DDR3 technology has not matured yet, so in time we will see DDR3 modules with tighter timings.