Intel PAT Compared On 865PE Boards

Xaley writes "There is roundup at VR-Zone on several 865PE boards which came equipped with Intel PAT feature and definitely consumers will be happy to purchase these boards without paying a premium price that Intel has charged for their 875P chipset. A typical 865PE board costs around $150 and a 875P board costs around $200-250 so it is a cost savings of $100. Of course, Intel won't be too happy about it since sales of their 875P chipsets will be affected but there is no stopping for motherboard manufacturers from adding in the PAT feature into their 865PE boards now."

Comments

Ugh.

[be-fan]

Intel should stop reusing acronyms. PAT = Page Attribute Table, a feature in PIII+ processors that helps manage caching of memory ranges.

Re:Ugh.

[InnovativeCX]

The above description was slightly vague, so I went out and did a googling for those that would like a little more info. A couple USENET posts turned up the following:

This feature provides more flexible interface allowing to setup various memory cache modes on a page-by-page bases. It is much easier to program than MTRRs
and does not suffer from their size/alignment limitations.

and

The Page Attribute Table (PAT) is an extension to the x86 page table format that lets you enable Write Combining on a per-page basis. Details can be found in chapter 9.13 of the Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual, Volume 3
(System Programming).

No stopping?

[Quixote]

Don't count Chipzilla to just roll over and play dead. They have already warned MoBo manufacturers not to turn the i865 into the i875. I wonder how many will heed the warning? Its not as if there are major alternatives out there (note, I said "major").

Or just buy an AMD-based board

[Brian Stretch]

since AMD doesn't harrass/sue third-party chipset suppliers (like VIA) so no one can get away with playing games like Intel is doing with PAT. I prefer nVidia nForce2 chipset boards these days. YMMV.

For those that were wondering...

[JRHelgeson]

PAT=Performance Acceleration Technology
The 875P Canterwood chipset with PAT supposedly provides a 5-7% performance improvement over 865 chipset.

WOO HOO!

TMFA's! When will we start patenting acronyms?
PAT=
Port Address Translation
Page Attribute Table
and now Performance Acceleration Technology

Re:For those that were wondering...

[lmfr]

And for those wondering how to activate it in 865PE, there's an article at Tom's Hardware.

Prices

[MC68040]

200-250 is not correct in many cases for the P boards, I just got a MSI 875P Neo board for around 150 and it has all the goodies like SATA and got excellent test results.

Commercial Viability

[Detritus]

This feature is useless for business applications where reliability is essential. While the PAT logic is in the 865 chipset, Intel does not guarantee that it has passed chip-level testing. It may work, it may not work, it may only work over a limited temperature range. It falls into the same category as overclocking the CPU. You don't know if the chip passed the test for a higher classification and was marked for a lower speed to satisfy market demand, or if it failed the test for reliable operation at the higher classification. If you want that guarantee, you pay the premium for the 875P.

Re:Intel could've easily solved this "problem"

[barureddy]

Most of the 865 chips are basically rejected 875 chips. Intel didn't want to waste the chips so they came up with the idea of just renaming them 865 and sell them as lower performing chips.

Your right in that intel should have done something to permanently disable the chips.