The
Memory Translator Hub (
MTH) is a small
chip on the
CC820 Intel Motherboard. This chip is design to translate the
RDRAM memory signals, which are the board's
native signals, into
SDRAM signals. This is done because Intel found out too late the
Rambus RAM (RDRAM) was much too expensive for most people to afford ($600 - $800 for
128MB). Intel created a new board with SDRAM
slots on it, without changing the base
hardware. Enter the MTH. It allowed Intel to cheaply
convert the RDRAM based
820 chipset to SDRAM.
Unfortunately for Intel the chip is
defective. According to their web site, the chip is sound sensitive, whatever that means. In effect, it causes the
system to randomly
re-boot without warning. I have experienced this several times, and it really sucks. You're doing whatever and BAM! the system restarts. Intel has issued a
recall on all boards with the MTH. Visit the MTH
support website at "http://support.intel.com/support/mth/". If you know you have the CC820 motherboard and wish to replace it, you can call Intel at 1-800-628-8686 and there should be an MTH option on the
phone service. The
replacement option is a
VC820 motherboard (the RDRAM version) with 128MB of (I think) PC700 RDRAM.