Chapter 2 System Overview
Compaq Deskpro EP Series of Personal Computers
First Edition – April 1998
2-6
2.4 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
The Compaq Deskpro EP Series of Personal Computers are based on Intel Celeron and Pentium
II processors matched with a support chipset that is complimentary in design. The system
architecture (Figure 2-6) utilizes three main buses: the Host bus, the Peripheral Component
Interconnect (PCI) bus, and the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus.
The Host and memory buses provide high performance support for CPU, cache and system
memory accesses, and operate at 66 or 100 MHz, depending on the system board employed. The
PCI bus provides support for the graphics subsystem, the EIDE controllers, and expansion
devices and operates at 33 MHz. The ISA bus provides a standard 8-MHz interface for the
input/output (I/O) devices such as the keyboard, diskette drive, serial and parallel interfaces, as
well as the addition of 16- or 8-bit expansion devices.
This system also includes an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP). The AGP interface provides a 66-
MHz synchronous coupling with the Host bus. The system comes standard with an AGP 1X
graphics adapter.
The support chipset consists of the 443EX/BX system controller (north bridge) and the 82371
ISA/IDE accelerator (south bridge). These components control the Host/Memory/PCI
transactions and provide the IDE and USB functions.
The National PC87309 I/O controller includes the standard I/O interfaces and the diskette drive
controller.
Table 2-1 lists the architectural components of the system:
Table 2–1.
Architectural Comparison
Table 2-1
.
Architectural Comparison
Model 2100 Model 3200 Model 6350 Model 6400 Model 8400
Processor Type Celeron Celeron/
Pentium II
Pentium II Pentium II Pentium II
CPU Speed (MHz) 266 266/300/333 350 400 400
Host Bus speed (MHz) 66 66 100 100 100
Hard Drive 2. GB 3.2 GB 6.4 GB 6.4 GB 8.4 GB
CD-ROM & Audio Card Optional CDS models CDS models CDS models CDS models
PCI Exp. Connectors 3 [1] 3 [1] 4 [1] 4 [1] 4 [1]
ISA Exp. Connectors 3 [1] 3 [1] 2 [1] 2 [1] 2 [1]
Support Chipset 440EX 440EX 440BX 440BX 440BX
System Memory:
# of DIMM sockets
Standard
Maximum installable
2
16 MB
256 MB
2
32 MB
256 MB
3
64 MB
384 MB
3
64 MB
384 MB
3
128 MB
384 MB
Graphics Controller ATI Rage IIc
AGP Card
ATI Rage IIc
AGP Card
ATI RagePro
AGP Card
ATI RagePro
AGP Card
Diamond Fire
AGP CArd
NOTES:
[1] One PCI and one ISA connector shared a common slot.
The following subsections provide a description of the key functions and subsystems. The
Deskpro EP Series uses two types of system boards (66-MHz slot 1 and 100-MHz slot 1). Note
that many discussions throughout this guide are based according to system board.
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