The i845PE is the last in a series of chipsets that dates back to the original i845, which was the first low cost alternative to the i850 chipset way back in the days of the Willamette P4. It used PC133 Sdram, and absolutely robbed the P4 of most of its performance. Fortunately, Intel added DDR support with the i845D, 533mhz frontsidebus support with the i845E, and finally PC 2700 and Hyperthreading support with the i845PE. The motherboard we’re looking at today is probably one of the last i845PE reviews you’ll see here at Ocprices, as the sun has just about set on this chipset. It comes from Soyo, who originally burst onto the enthusiast scene with their “Dragon” series of motherboards for the Athlon.
Looking at the box, you’ll notice that it doesn’t say “Dragon” anywhere. That is because this is not a “Dragon” class motherboard, missing the AGP Pro slot and onboard 6 channel sound to classify it as such. Those aren’t exactly horrible losses though. (Does anyone out there actually own an AGP Pro card?) The basic AC’97 4-channel audio is forgivable considering the just over $100 price point (check it out here) of this motherboard. (Or £96.50 if you live in the UK from chillblast).
