With October 30 only a month away and being the day Intel wants the big system builders to pick up the Pentium 4, it appears as though this launch may not happen according to Intels plan. Unfortunately, in this case, its not the processor technology that is holding everything up but the system builders dont appear to be completely enamored of the i850 Tehama chipset that supports it. The vendors report not having enough time to proof the platform and one Register source even reported receiving a board on which all the components hadnt soldered. To make things apparently worse, it appears Dell has found a bug with the i815 that affects graphics performance and stability. Their concern is that a possible instability within the chipset can cause the system to crash under heavy graphics load. All this on the heels of last years i820 MTH problems doesnt bode well for the system builders trust of Intel core logic technology.

EIC Note:

As we haven’t managed to get our hands on any of the Intel test boards yet we can neither confirm, nor deny these allegations but will at least keep up with this situation as it develops