Intel D810E2CA3 Motherboard Review

We are currently witnessing a flooding of high performance motherboards on the market today. These days, the fastest motherboard may only be marginally faster than the slowest ones available. Without a doubt, the mainboard and chipset market is no less than cutthroat. Though most users are accustomed to seeing such products available in abundance, a significant portion of the market remains interested on those products that focus upon the delivery of good business performance at a low cost.

As we will see in this review, the Intel D810E2CA3 "Cayman 3" motherboard is one such motherboard providing very good performance in business applications at a reduced overall cost. The D810E2CA3 is based upon the Intel 810E2 chipset and comes outfitted with ATA 100 support, 4 USB ports, 4 PCI slots and 2 DIMM sockets in a micro ATX layout.

With a feature set like this, the line between business and high end motherboards seems to be a lot less defined.

About the i810E2 Chipset

The i810E2 is an integrated chipset whose graphics are based on the 82810E Graphics Memory Controller Hub (GMCH). The GMCH handles all graphics and main memory system workload. It also features ACPI functions and all known power management features.

Also part of the i810E2 chipset is the 82801BA I/O Controller Hub (ICH2) which directly connects motherboard peripherals such as the graphics, memory, the AC97 controller, a LAN controller, the ATA 100 controller, 4 USB ports and PCI add in cards and provides for a 266 MB/sec bandwidth (twice the bandwidth of the PCI bus). The system and video BIOS are situated in a 4Mbit Firmware Hub (FWH), the 82802AB.