Conclusions
Those of you who were looking for earth-shaking performance differences out of Intel's new chipsets may be disappointed, but realistically, most of the changes are not of the sort easily measurable via common benchmarks or applications. No, the 915G and 925X chipsets aren't really faster in gaming with PCI Express graphics cards, but we saw the same thing back when AGP 8X arrived. That doesn't mean we don't need a better, faster path to the graphics card; it just shows that game developers tend to write their applications with the limitations of their target hardware in mind. As of right now, that target is probably a graphics card with 128MB of memory, AGP4X, and a DirectX 8-class GPU. Depressing, but true. Applications that take advantage of PCI Express in a big way will come along sooner or later.

As for DDR2 memory, at 533MHz, it's a little disappointing, because it isn't really faster than DDR400. However, remember that we were testing with first-gen Micron DIMMs with relatively conservative timings. We may see better performance yet out of fancy performance DIMMs like the Kingston HyperX or Corsair XMS2 stuff. If not, well, DDR2 probably won't be worth the price premium for a while yet. I have here an Abit motherboard based on the 915P chipset with DDR400 memory support. I'm curious to see how it performs. Boards like it may be the best choice for those looking to get into a PCI Express system right away.

Obviously, the biggest performance win of them all with the new chipsets is Serial ATA with Native Command Queuing. Its performance alone would be enough to sway me away from the older Pentium 4 platform and perhaps from an AMD-based one, as well. We'll have to measure it more thoroughly in time, but based on what we've seen so far, I expect NCQ will cut boot times, among other things. It's just the right thing to do, and now we can have it, complete with RAID 0 and 1, without paying for SCSI. We can even have data integrity and extra performance with two drives, thanks to Matrix RAID.

The 915G's integrated graphics seems to be an improvement, but the graphics driver needs work in order to make the GMA's claim of DirectX 9 support seem credible. For what it will be asked to do, the GMA 900 should be just fine. Just don't ask it to run Far Cry.

The rest of the changes to the PC platform are a little harder to quantify. I need to play with High Definition Audio a little more using a proper 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system and a high-quality audio source before I feel qualified to pronounce it a complete success, but it's at least decent. I'm a little shocked how capable Realtek's ALC880 codec turned out to be. Eight channels of 24-bit, 192KHz audio is a heckuva new baseline for PC audio capabilities.

So what should we make of the whole package, including Intel's new LGA775 Pentium 4 Prescott processors? Well, right now, the AMD64 platform seems to have the lead in terms of overall CPU performance, gaming performance, and memory performance, despite the arrival of PCI Express and DDR2 memory. The Athlon 64 has power consumption and thermal characteristics superior to any system based on an LGA775 processor. Also, the Athlon 64 unambiguously has support right now for 64-bit operating systems and applications as they become available. All in all, no small set of advantages.

AMD also seem to have a big advantage in terms of product availability at the high end of the market. As of today, I couldn't find a single Pentium 4 3.4E listed for sale on PriceWatch, and here we are reviewing a 3.6GHz model. Craziness. Intel needs to launch silicon, not paper.

However, with the 915 and 915X Express chipsets, Intel has innovated mightily in ways that deliver a better overall user experience and a better overall PC platform. Of course, everyone will benefit from some of these changes, including Athlon 64 buyers, once competent PCI Express chipsets arrive for the Athlon 64. But Intel's implementation of all these new technologies is here now, seems reasonably solid, and is poised to become the new PC platform standard over the next six to twelve months. Taken together, all these improvements add up to a pretty compelling argument for 915/925X-based systems, assuming they're sufficiently available. I'm cautiously optimistic, and I'm intrigued to start reviewing new 915/925X motherboards, higher performance DDR2 DIMMs, and PCI Express graphics cards. That optimism may turn into an all-out recommendation, especially if Intel can turn on its 64-bit extensions and get its CPU heat problems reined in a bit.