Acer Labs unwraps cheapest Pentium 4 chipset

Acer Labs has finally taken the wraps off its Pentium 4 chipset, the Aladdin P4 and has begun seeding the product to mobo makers.

And, at just $31 a pop, it's the cheapest P4 chipset in town, beating even VIA's controversial P4X266 on price. Acer wants to get the chipset into volume production in October, to which end it's producing the Aladdin P4 on a 0.25 micron process.

VIA's part is fabbed at 0.22 micron. The other non-Intel P4 chipset, from SIS, is fabbed at 0.18 micron. SIS' part, the 645, was formally introduced last week.

The Aladdin supports up to 3GB of DDR333 memory, like SIS' part, though it will also handle DDR266, DDR200, PC133 and PC100 SDRAM. ®