Northwood: Intel mobos ready and waiting

New releases of the BIOS for 478 pin mobos using the i850 Rambus and i845 SDRAM chipsets are available on the Intel support site including the necessary tweaks and tweakettes to support the lower core voltage and larger cache of Northwood, signalling the end of the road for the plucky Willamette core.

The bad news is if you rushed out and bought one of the first P4 systems using the 423 pin socket (probably with a D850GB Garibaldi mobo), you're stuffed, because the only new P4s available will use the newer 478 pin socket, so upgrades are right out.

The good news is if you've got a 478 pin P4 box now, you'll be able to bung in a Northwood and benefit from higher clock speeds and double the L2 cache. So if you're planning on buying a P4 system in the near future, for God's sake make sure it's a 478 pin one. The current Intel motherboards capable of supporting Northwood are the D850MV (Maryville) and D850MD (Medford) RDRAM jobbies, and the D845HV (Havre) and D845WN (Winnipeg) SDRAM ones. µ