Test notes
We tested the 865PE and 865G against six of their closest competitors, including the SiS 655, which has dual-channel DDR memory support. Watch for several key things in the benchmark results.

First, you can see how the 865PE and 865G stack up against older chipsets with a top bus speed of 533MHz. For the time being, these chipsets are the 865's primary competition, even if they don't support a higher bus speed.

Next, we've tested the 865G both with and without its integrated graphics enabled. The 865G does perform a little differently than the 865PE, even without graphics, because of its graphics-enabled memory controller. Also, watch to see how having integrated turned on affects the 865G's overall performance. Some memory bandwidth will be dedicated to graphics, slowing overall system performance to some degree.

Also, watch the battle between the 865PE and 875P to see the impact of Intel's PAT. The 875 has it, and the 865PE doesn't. Otherwise, they're essentially the same. You can decide whether PAT is worth a price premium.

Finally, we've included scores for an Intel 845PE-based Abit BH7 motherboard with its front-side bus overclocked to 800MHz and its single memory channel at DDR400 speeds, just for kicks. The 845PE is overclocked in this scenario, so nothing it does will be official, but the results should be officially interesting to see.

Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.

Our test systems were configured like so:

Intel 845PE Intel 850E Intel E7205 Intel 865PE Intel 865G Intel 875P SiS 655
Processor Pentium 4 3.06GHz Pentium 4 3.06GHz Pentium 4 3.06GHz Pentium 4 3.0GHz Pentium 4 3.0GHz Pentium 4 3.0GHz Pentium 4 3.06GHz
Front-side bus 533MHz (133MHz quad-pumped) 533MHz (133MHz quad-pumped) 533MHz (133MHz quad-pumped) 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped) 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped) 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped) 533MHz (133MHz quad-pumped)
Motherboard Abit BH7 Intel D850EMV2 Aopen AX4R Plus Intel D865PERL Intel D865GBF Intel D875PBZ Gigabyte 8SQ800
North bridge 82845E MCH 82850E MCH 82845G MCH 82865PE MCH 82865G MCH 82875P MCH 648
South bridge 82801DB ICH4 82801BA ICH2 82801DB ICH4 82801ER ICH5-R 82801EB ICH5 82801ER ICH5-R 963
Chipset drivers Intel Application Accelerator 2.3 Intel Application Accelerator 2.3 Intel Application Accelerator 2.3 Intel Application Accelerator for RAID 3.0 Intel INF update Intel Application Accelerator for RAID 3.0 SiS AGP 1.15
Memory size 512MB (2 DIMMs) 512MB (4 RIMMs) 512MB (2 DIMMs) 512MB (2 DIMMs) 512MB (2 DIMMs) 512MB (2 DIMMs) 512MB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair XMS3200 DDR SDRAM at 333MHz Samsung PC800/PC1066 Rambus DRAM Corsair XMS3200 DDR SDRAM at 266MHz Corsair XMS3200 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz Corsair XMS3200 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz Kingmax DDR-400 SDRAM at 400MHz Corsair XMS3200 DDR SDRAM at 333MHz
Hard drive Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100
Graphics ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB (7.84 drivers)
Sound Creative SoundBlaster Live!
OS Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 1, DirectX 9

All tests on the P4 systems were run with Hyper-Threading enabled.

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. If you're looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, Corsair's RAM is definitely worth considering.

The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.