Intel continues to confuse us with its actions as of late. Not only did they renew their contract with questionable Rambus, but also release a new version of the Pentium 3. Known as the Tualatin, it comes with both the standard 256KB of L2 cache and a breath taking 512KB on the server version. The Tualatin and the Coppermine share the same core, with the Tualatin sporting a die shrink to 0.13 micron. Despite this, current Penitum 3 motherboards will not support the Tualatin due to a lower voltage requirement and altered pin configurations. The only Intel chipset to support the Tualatin is the 815 B step. As most already know, the 815 supports only 512 MB of RAM, which is entirely not sufficient for a server. (which happens to be what the Tualatin 512KB was aimed for) Thankfully VIA has a Motherboard to support the Tualatin. Intel does not plan to release any higher clock speeds than 1266MHz, once again leaving simple upgrades out of the question.
Have a look at the
review over at
Tom\'s Hardware
