AOpen’s push for mainstream Pentium M use

Pentium M

At the end of 2004 enthusiats in the hardware industry started to take note of Intel Pentium M desktop boards as being one of the best platforms that money could buy. Using the famed Intel mobile processor, the Pentium M Dothan, and using mobile chipsets on a micro-ATX motherboard proved to be a wolf in sheeps clothing for many. The systems required very little cooling since the Pentium M is a low wattage part and even though the Pentium M lacks Intel Hyper-Threading support the processor can easily hold it’s own against any of the single core Intel or AMD processors. With a little overclocking and an overclocking friendly Pentium M processor many were seeing Intel’s mobile processor beating the Intel Extreme Edition and AMD Athlon 64 FX processors.

Only DFI and AOpen had Intel 855 chipset boards that could run the Pentium M at the time and it was a toss up as to which board was better. Many consumers were not found of the Intel 855 chipset because at the time PCI Express video cards and DDR2 memory modules were being heavily marketed and the DFI 855GME and AOpen i855GMEm-LFS lacked all these features due to chipset limitations. Flash forward to July 2005 and currently AOpen is the only motherboard company to update their 2004 Pentium M motherboard line and come out with an Intel 915 based board with PCI Express, DDR2 & DDR1 memory support, plus numerous other chipset features thanks to the newer Intel chipset.

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