Intel 965 +ICH8 - Bye Bye not quite legacy?

[Dave Baumann]

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06/06/intel_launches_p965/

The Reg points out in the diagram that IDE is missing - not that many optical drives are based on SATA yet and last I heard there were some issues with Booting from optical SATA devices (although perhaps this is up to the platform to make it significantly look like "standard" PATA for booting).

However, what the report doesn't highlight is that the diagram also appears to missing any PCI (conventional) support, which is going to be a bit of a kick in the nuts to Creative at the very least.

Wonder if they are really missing or just not diagrammed.

 

[Zaphod]

Wonder if they are really missing or just not diagrammed.

According to Chapter 5 of the ICH8 Family Datasheet (p. 89) it does appear to support PCI. There's also a diagram indicating PCI slots on p. 40.

 

[LeStoffer]

According to Chapter 5 of the ICH8 Family Datasheet (p. 89) it does appear to support PCI. There's also a diagram indicating PCI slots on p. 40.

Also worth noting is that pretty much all motherboards built on the P965 is featuring both IDE and normal PCI slots.

Asus P5B Deluxe (which I will probably get in due time) is one of them:

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1179&l1=3&l2=11&l3=307

 

[Dave Baumann]

Just reading Anands first Competex report and they state that PATA is indeed removed from the ICH with motherboar vendors having to put on a controller if they want it - that ASUS, for instance, states "JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller".

It appears there are still issues with SATA optical devices:

Unfortunately, as BenQ tells us, the same desire to transition to SATA doesn’t exist with the Tier 1 OEMs that are building systems using these optical drives. Apparently there are still a number of compatibility issues with the default Windows driver and many SATA optical drives, which has made the big OEMs wary of moving away from tried and true PATA drives. With very little OEM pressure to transition to SATA optical drives, manufacturers like BenQ have no reason to push for a quicker move to SATA.