The Memory Controller Hub (or MCH) is the center of activity for the memory bus, the AGP bus and the system bus. Notice the lack of a "little green heatsink?" This can be attributed to the move from the .35-micron to the .25-micron process (reducing the heat produced).

Intel's new MCH supports front side bus frequencies of 133 and 100MHz, meaning the P3C-E,like other i820 boards, won't be able to run with a Celeron under the hood.

Many people in the overclocking community have run into problems with 440BX boards due to limitations of the AGP bus divider and the frequencies at which their graphics cards would stably run . Luckily, the P3C-3 incorporates an AGP divider of 1/2, increasing the probability of a successful overclock.

What used to be the South Bridge is now the I/O Controller Hub (or ICH). Running the PCI bus, the ISA bus, USB ports, the AMR and the Super I/O (keyboard, mouse, floppy disk), the ICH also offers support for DMA/66.

We won't go into much detail about the Audio Modem Riser (AMR) because we don't consider it a feature. Basically a soft-modem/sound card combination, gamers will shun it for the extra CPU usage it consumes. Expect to see OEM's utilizing the AMR to save some money (and beware!).

For those who aren't quite ready to invest in RDRAM, ASUS also makes a SDRAM to RIMM converter with an onboard Memory Translator Hub (MTH). This conversion is expensive in terms of performance though and should be avoided if at all possible.

These architecture changes are the first we've seen since the introduction of the FX chipset, which was released in conjunction to the Pentium II. Hopefully, this new design will be able to further eliminate bottlenecks associated with the North/South Bridge layout.

• Slot 1 for Intel® Pentium® III / Pentium® II 350 ~ 733+ MHz with Built-in 512KB L2 Cache
• Support 133MHz / 100MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) Processors
• Supports ASUS® S370-133 CPU Card for FC-PGA Coppermine PIII Processors
• External Frequencies, Vcore & Vio Adjustable
• Supports The Fastest RDRAM Memory with RAMBUS Architecture
• Advanced MCH + ICH + FWH Architecture