The Intel® 850E chipset was designed to optimize performance of the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor with Intel® NetBurst" microarchitecture. Featuring a now faster 533MHz system bus, dual RDRAM memory channels and an enhanced I/O Controller Hub (ICH2), the 850E chipset makes a direct connection from the graphics and memory for faster access to peripherals and higher system level functionality. The 850E chipset also provides dual RDRAM memory channels and an enhanced I/O Controller Hub (ICH2Dual USB controllers double the bandwidth to 24Mbps across four ports, providing a significant increase over previous port technology).
Learn how the Intel® 850 chipset family complements the Pentium 4 processor. View animation.
A 533MHz system bus provides significant bandwidth over previous technologies and, combined with longer pipelines, eliminates bottlenecks and enables higher performance than ever before. The Intel Pentium 4 processor also provides advanced dynamic execution to more accurately predict branch utilization, and an execution trace cache stores decoded instructions, eliminating the decoder from the main instruction loop.
The Intel 850E chipset features dual RDRAM memory channels that provide 3.2 GB/s memory bandwidth to extract full performance from the Intel Pentium 4 processor. In addition, the 4.2 GB/s bandwidth of the 533 MHz system bus in the Pentium 4 processor, makes it the ideal choice for the increased demands of memory-intensive applications.
Utilizing Intel® Hub Architecture design, the Intel 850E chipset features a high bandwidth (266MB/sec) interface and wider pipelines that allow the chipset to deal effectively with isochronous data without the bottlenecks associated with PCI protocols in north bridge/south bridge chipset design. The 850E chipset also enables multiple streams of I/O, PCI and local accelerators to run concurrently.
The integrated architecture in the Intel 850E chipset features a direct pipeline for audio and video data. The 850E chipset also supports up to six channels of AC97 audio for better sound quality overall, and full surround sound capability for live broadcast and other Digital Dashboard programming. Robust and responsive, the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP4X) on the Intel 850E chipset doubles the graphics bandwidth over AGP2X, better enabling photo-realistic 3D and seamless multi-media applications.
Intel's comprehensive approach to platform development, validation, manufacturing and support ensures the Intel 850E chipset maximizes your investment and extends the life span of your system overall.
Offering a wide variety of peripheral options, the Intel 850E chipset delivers maximum system performance while supporting all the latest platform features. The 850E chipset has the headroom necessary to support emerging applications and user environments, while maximizing system performance for both current and future technologies.
The Intel 850E chipset has dual USB controllers that provide 24Mbps bandwidth across four ports. The 850E chipset also includes dual Ultra ATA/100 controllers and a LAN Connect Interface. The LAN Connect interface provides flexible network solutions for home phone line, 10/100Mbps Ethernet and 10/100Mbps Ethernet with LAN manageability, utilizing Intel® SingleDriver" technology.
Using a Communication and Networking Riser (CNR) card, the Intel 850E chipset allows system configuration with a baseline feature set that can be upgraded with an audio card, modem card, network card, or a combination card with two or more features. This not only saves motherboard space, but also allows system configuration flexibility to integrators in support of different end-user requirements.
The Intel Pentium 4 processor was designed to support the latest Internet demands. The high bandwidth communications technology in the Intel 850E chipset makes it ideal for large texture 3D images and advanced Internet business applications. Additionally, the architecture in the 850E chipset features direct pipelines for audio and video data to provide a richer Internet and e-Commerce experience for even the most sophisticated end-user.
Home Computing
Learn how the Intel® 850 chipset family complements the Pentium 4 processor. 
