1.3Special features

1.3.1 Product hi ghli ghts

Latest processor technol ogy

The motherboard comes with a 775-pin surface mount Land Grid Array (LGA) socket designed for the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor in the 775-land package. The motherboard supports the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor with 1066/800/533 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB). The motherboard also supports the Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology and is fully compatible with Intel® 05B/05A or 04B/04A processors. See page 2-6 for details.

I ntel ® EM64T

The motherboard supports Intel® Pentium® 4 CPUs with the Intel® EM64T (Extended Memory 64 Technology). The Intel® EM64T feature allows your computer to run on 64-bit operating systems and access larger amounts of system memory for faster and more efficient computing. See the Appendix for details.

Enhanced I ntel SpeedStep® Technol ogy (EI ST)

The Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology (EIST) intelligently manages the CPU resources by automatically adjusting the CPU voltage and core frequency depending on the CPU loading and system speed or power requirement. See page 4-20 and the Appendix for details.

I ntel ® E7230 and I ntel ® I CH 7R chi pset

The Intel® E7230 Memory Controller Hub (MCH) and the Intel® ICH7R (I/O controller hub) provide the vital interfaces for the motherboard.

The MCH provides the processor, dual-channel DDR2-533/667 memory, and PCI Express interfaces. The ICH is a new generation server class I/O controller hub that provides the interface for PCI 2.3, USB 2.0, and SATA among others.

DDR2-667 memory support

The motherboard supports DDR2 memory which features data transfer rates of up to 667 MHz to meet the higher bandwidth requirements of the latest server applications. The dual-channel memory architecture doubles the bandwidth of your system memory to boost system performance, eliminating bottlenecks with peak bandwidths of up to 10.7 GB/s.

PCI Express™ i nterface

The motherboard fully supports PCI Express, the latest I/O interconnect technology that speeds up the PCI bus. PCI Express features point-to-point serial interconnections between devices and allows higher clockspeeds by carrying data in packets. This high speed interface is software compatible with existing PCI or PCI-X specifications. See page 2-17 for details.

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Chapter 1: Product introduction