MSI 865PE Neo2-P motherboards for P4 Prescott to arrive in mid-January

The current situation the support of the future Pentium 4 Prescott processors resembles the last Summer, when we witnessed the wave of i845x motherboards guaranteed to support 800MHz similar to the more expensive i865/i875P solutions. However, Prescott requirements differ: first, they need the new CPU ID support by BIOS, second, the compatibility with the new chips´ electrical and thermal parameters. Anyway, according to Voltage Regulator-Down (VRD) 10.0 Design Guide and VRD10.0 Design Guideline Addendum, published by Intel the day before yesterday, it would be hard to surprise makers by something more power-hungry than Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Judging by this quite:

"System boards supporting Intel Pentium 4 Processor with Hyper-Threading Technology operating at 3.06 GHz or higher and processor code named Prescott must have voltage regulator designs compliant to applicable FMB electrical and thermal standards. For Intel Pentium 4 processors, this includes full electrical support of 70 A Icc_max specifications and robust cooling solutions to support 63 A thermal design current (TDC) indefinitely within the envelope of system operating conditions. For processor code named Prescott, this includes full electrical support of 78 A Icc_max specifications and robust cooling solutions to support 68 A thermal design current (VRTDC) indefinitely within the envelope of system operating conditions."

the Prescott family will have significantly lesser appetite than Pentium 4 EE.

The above docs contain lots of useable data, and I think the specialists will be glad to browse them at least. And we now get back to the main theme — the release dates of MSI P motherboard series supporting Prescott solutions, which will be marked by stickers below:

Initially, the family will include 865PE Neo2-PS (standard, Serial ATA), 865PE Neo2-PLS (10/100 LAN, Serial ATA), and 865PE Neo2-PFISR (Gb LAN, IEEE1394, SATA, SATA RAID). Besides, according to this information, MSI 865PE Neo2 should also support Prescott and P4 Extreme Edition processors.

Korean Brainbox also states that shipments of MSI 865PE Neo2-P are to start in mid-January. There´s no prices information at the moment, but I guess they won´t differ much from those of MSI 865PE Neo2.

Source: Brainbox

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