Introduction

With the recent release of Intel's 533MHz bus Pentium 4 processor, there was a sudden need for a motherboard chipset to officially support the increase in FSB speed. The end result was the i845E and i845G chipsets - Both of which are essentially identical to their predecessor, the i845D, however, they both include official support for 533MHz bus processors and in the case of the i845G, integrated graphics as well.

In our original i845G review, we concluded that performance was greatly held back by lack of DDR333 support and the integrated graphics did not perform to our expectations. However, to this point not much has been published on TweakTown regarding the i845E. We have just recently managed to obtain our first retail i845E review sample, in the form of the Abit BD7II-RAID. Abit have enjoyed much success in the enthusiast motherboard market over the past year, which is mainly due to the fact that they continually release quality products that cater for the hardware enthusiast and overclocker - often in the form of extra features, an excellent layout and/or a plethora of BIOS adjustments through their famed "SoftMenu".

How does the i845E equipped BD7II-RAID compare to its predecessor, the i845D chipset, and more importantly, its competitors? Read on to find out!