I have been waiting with baited breath for Intel to move their destop processors away from the deep pipeline of the netburst architecture to a more efficient Dothan-like design, and yet to be released Conroe looks to be the cpu to do just that. In an table here and in an earlier article, Tom's indicated that the new 975X chipset will support the Conroe core, but in an Intel processor roadmap here, Intel indicated that Conroe might require a "future chipset". I have seen both Intel's roadmaps and Tom's charts be wrong from time to time. I have been planning on upgrading to an amd system very soon, but if intel's new 975x has a good chance of supporting a Conroe i will buy one insted with a current intel proc and upgrade later. who thinks its a safe bet to count on this new chipset supporting conroe enough to buy it instead of a new amd system?

i know this post is nearly a month old now, but this same question has been seemingly left unanswered to me for a couple months now.

is the 975X chipset going to support conroe? will all motherboards with this chipset support conroe if so, or only later on revised models?

Will the 975X chipset incorporate all the benefits of the Broadwater(965?) chipset ? how will the broadwater differ from the 975x? It seems like the broadwater will support 800mhz ddr2 ram, while the 975x only 667mhz? and the broadwater will only have one 16xPCIe slot? will there be any intel chipsets that supports 2 full 16xPCIe slots and not just two 8x ones? i would figure the broadwater chipset to be a lesser version of the 975X chipset, but i feel that isn't completely true.

with there be Conroe CPUs with 1333 MHz FSB and not just 1066mhz? will 975x or broadwater support these 1333mhz CPUs if so?

does the 945 chipset end with support of only presler (8x0 & 9x0?)? or will there be other chips it supports?

are the nvidia nforce4 intel chipsets going to support presler or conroe?

is there anything im missing, like details involving HDMI support? I'm simply feeling very confused with all the speculation of future compatibility and features. most the information regarding these speculations are very old, or vague , ie: "with platform refresh only".


on a personal note regarding all this:

I am generally a fan of intel, despite their desktop CPUs sucking ever since prescott came out. I have a shuttle XPC with a P830 chip in it, and i love it -- even though it cant keep pace with AMDs offerings. its quiet, it overclocks pretty great, and it cost me less than you would expect. Ive generally been unhappy with the AMD motherboards out there - ive had bad luck with them, but my intel boards are rock solid.

anyways, with xmas approaching, im looking into buying a new computer. AMDs computers are looking tempting considering intel's current offerings, but i still feel like getting an intel. a futureproof intel system. what im hoping to do is purchase a prelser chip when they hit, stick that in my XPC and start using it for a HTPC, and put the PD830 chip in a 975X motherboard and wait till conroe comes out before upgrading the PD830 chip to something better. sounds crazy.. maybe.. ? but oh well, im a crazy guy.

the idea of waiting a year until conroe comes out to purchase a new computer is killing me... and i just cant bring myself to buy an AMD. eek!