Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHz

This is Intel's latest processor (2.8 GHz Pentium 4 is being launched as we speak, which should result in a significant price cut for the 2.53 GHz). The early Pentium 4's were criticised for not being powerful enough. However, with clock speeds exceeding 2 GHz, the Pentium 4 has surely confounded those critics. In the pictures above you can see the Intel D845GBV motherboard, with the tiny Pentium 4 2.53 GHz at the top, which fits into the microPGA478 socket. It is made using the 0.13 micron process (so the transistors are packed more closely). This is signifcantly smaller than the first generation of Pentium 4s. The D845GBV board is an integrated one, featuring graphics, sound and also 4 USB 2 ports (which can be expanded to 6). It supports bus speeds of 400 or 533 MHz. If you prefer to bypass the integrated graphics you can just insert an AGP card (upto 4X). However, for most purposes the on-board graphics seemed fine. Also this motherboard supports cheaper DDR266 SDRAM memory. It is nice to see that you can get genuine Intel motherboards that do not need very expensive RAMBUS memory! I tested the motherboard with 512 MB DDR266 memory and a WD 100GB 7200rpm IDE drive. There are of course the usual standard features on the motherboard, like support for Ultra ATA 100 drives and PS/2 connectors. However, I could not get my Adaptec 2940U2W's bios to boot on the motherboard (although once booted up SCSI devices were recognised).