Features

The Canterwood chipset is intended to be Intels next flagship chipset. As such its list of features is pretty impressive, as well as the much talked about 800mhz FSB capability and dual channel DDR400 support, it also comes equipped with two Serial ATA channels with software RAID support, ECC memory support, AGP8X, and Hyperthreading, along with two totally new technologies. The onboard Gigabit ethernet is directly linked to the Memory Control Hub in the northbridge, which bypasses the potential bottleneck of the PCI bus. The other new development is Intels vaguely named Performance Accelerating Technology or PAT. Intel are to be saluted for resisting the temptation to invent new words, although it is still rather unspecific. This technology alters memory timings on the fly, to help get the best you can from your memory.

Layout

This board has the best layout i have ever seen, I cannot find any major fault with it. To start with, the ATX connector is towards the top of the right hand edge, keeping the massive bundle of wires associated with it well out of the way. This could be seen as a bad thing since the traces to the CPU voltage regulation circuitry would be longer but no, the 4 pin "P4" connector is mere millimetres from the voltage regulator ICs which should mean the PSU is the limiting factor on power quality.

The four fan connectors are unusually in very sensible places, within easy reach of all normal fan locations. Including CPU, Intake, Exhaust and PSU/Top Blowhole.

The IDE drive connectors are again on the top right edge, vertically aligned meaning cable mess is minimised even with bulky ribbon cables. The two SATA connectors are located towards the bottom right of the board, which doesn't pose any problems as SATA cables are long, and extremely flexible.

The DIMM slots are well clear of the AGP port (plenty of room for a Geforce 4) which is a common fault on many motherboards. The only niggle on the entire board is that the DIMM slots are very close together. Too close in fact to use Heatspreaders let alone RAMsinks if you have more than two DIMMs.

The northbridge sink is probably fully capable of cooling an athlon, which makes a refreshing change from the "form over function" approach of many other manufacturers.

The IO shield contains a total of a whopping 6 USB ports, which with the extra header for front mounted USB give you an unprecedented 8 ports in total! The onboard Gigabit ethernet connector is also located on the IO shield as you would expect. Legacy isn't dead yet, as intel have shown with the tried and tested two PS/2 ports, a parallel and a single serial port.

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