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Most of us are familiar with Intel through their long and successful presence in the processor business. They have also managed to accrue a good portion of the budget/OEM market with their i810 based products. Intel is about to introduce a new motherboard based on the i810E2 chipset the D810E2CB.
65% Rating: 
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Intel D810E2CB |
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Integrated Graphics Performance
The D820E2CB has an
integrated graphics accelerator based on the i752, a newer version of the i740
graphics accelerator (which claimed its fame a few years ago). As most
integrated accelerators are based upon a unified memory architecture, main
system memory and its bandwidth is shared with the video accelerator resulting
in decreased business & 3D performance.
During our tests, the 2D
acceleration was more than enough for standard business applications. In fact,
the D810E2CB with its 230 MHz RAMDAC supports true color depth on higher
resolutions and higher refresh rates compared to other integrated motherboards
based on VIA PM133 (300 MHz RAMDAC).
Resolutions up to 1280x1024 looked
acceptable. The graphics driver allows multiple gamma settings which can be set
automatically depending on the executed application. Another plus point is the
support for motion compensation which results in decreased processor load during
DVD playback.
As with any other integrated graphics chipset on the market
today, the D810E2CB is far from being a desirable platform for high end 3D
graphics. For those not too serious about such applications or games, 3D
performance may be satisfactory for casual game play. While we found no
compatibility issues with the games we tried, the performance is indeed
low.
For our 3D performance tests, we used 3 boards with integrated
graphics accelerators: DFI CS65 SC (i815), Soyo 7VMA (VIA PM 133) and the
D810E2CB (i810E2).
All boards based on Intel 815/810 series have a limited
3D triangle setup which simply means that their integrated video adapter doesn't
scale well with high end processors in 3D gaming. Even at 640x480, the VIA PM133
with its integrated 3D Savage4 engine performs better on our 566 MHz Celeron. On
faster processors this difference between the Intel chipset family and VIA PM133
becomes even larger. However, we must not forget that these boards were not
intended to be a gaming platform.
Sound quality of the integrated AC97 codec found on
the D810E2CB is very good compared to all the rest integrated AC97 we have heard
up to now. While there is no support for various APIs (EAX, A3D, etc), we were
quite pleased with sound reproduction. There was limited sound interference and
the sound to noise (S/N) ratio was good enough for a medium priced speaker set.
Music sounded well balanced, with the correct and accurate amount of bass and
treble.
As Intel manufactures this board we weren't surprised at all when
we came to learn that CPU overclocking isn't supported. Nevertheless, since the
board utilizes a frequency oscillator manufactured by ICS (9250BF 16),
overclocking might be possible through software reprogramming of the registers.
At the time of review, we were unable to find an appropriate utility that
supported this particular oscillator.
Conclusions
The Intel D810E2CB
was designed as a low cost solution primarily for business applications. It is
quite obvious that it was never meant to offer full expandability or high end
performance. But from a tiny board we do enjoy a good number of features: it's
very cheap and stable, comes with an excellent software bundle, small footprint
(about 70% of an A4 page) and supports many of those standards found in more
expensive motherboards (integrated graphics, sound, network connectivity, 4 USB
ports, support for ATA 100, etc).
Performance wise, the D810E2CB scores
decently under our Winstone benchmarks. Though it lagged behind the highest
scorer by a couple of points, remember that this board tested here is simply a
pre production model and scores should increase when the final product is
launched.
Not everyone requires an extremely powerful system. All in all,
this product is an ideal solution in many cases where cost and need is a
limiting factor. PCs which perform specialized tasks (other than a normal PC)
would also find the D810E2CB quite
beneficial.
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