Intel 815 Chipset

Conclusion

There is no question about it that motherboard manufacturers want the i815 chipset to succeed and they will do everything in their power to make sure that they have i815 and i815E based boards available for purchase provided that they can get enough chips to satisfy their orders.

As it stands now, if you were to go out and purchase a 133MHz FSB Pentium III CPU today your fastest overall platform would be the overclocked BX133. If you don't feel so comfortable running your AGP card so far out of spec or are afraid that your memory may not be able to handle it, then your next best choice would be the i815.

There is now no reason to even consider the i820 chipset. In the past there were some that could justify it by saying that they needed to have an Intel chipset and wanted 133MHz FSB support as well as the ability to use their own AGP cards, but now with the i815 chipset available there is no reason that the i820 should even garner any attention.

Looking towards the future, VIA does have a DDR SDRAM solution coming for the Pentium III/Celeron, the Apollo Pro 2000 and unless they really screw something up it should easily outperform the 8 platforms we compared here today. At the same time, if you're planning on buying an Apollo Pro 2000 based motherboard, plan on waiting a little longer than it would take for you to go out and pick up an i815 board.

Once again it comes down to whether you're willing to wait or you need to make the purchase soon. If the answer is soon then the i815 would probably be your best overall bet, if the answer is that you can wait then let's hope your current setup isn't too frustratingly slow.