karama

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Was wondering if anybody knew when the x38 chipset from intel will be released? Was going to get a p35 board ( ASUS P5K3 DELUXE), but read about these new enthusiast chipsets.
 

BUFF

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Depends what you want. It won't be cheap.
Whilst some may make August I think that we'll see the bulk turn up in September.
 

orientalhero

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Heh, the X38 will have DDR3 only unlike the P35 and also have 2 PCI x16 slots which reduces the number of additional PCI slots (unlike the P35 with one x16 and one x4).
At least that's what I got from the Bearlake descriptions at the wikipedia entry.
It's funny how they describe the P35 as a low end chipset. That's what caught my eye with the X38.
And whilst this is a toms hardware forum, i saw a very nice comparison of the Crossfire running on the 975 chipset to running on the P35 on a rival site. Very interesting reading and quite pertinent to my iminent purchase of a new Crossfire PC.
 
I bet there will be mixed versions, supporting both DDR2 and DDR3, just not at the same time. Asus and Gigabyte have mobos like that based on P35. They'd be smart to do it for X38 too IMO. I hope it's possible. I read some predictions somewhere saying that DDR3 will be cheaper than DDR2 in about 2 years. If that's true it would be nice to have dual support.
 

cb62fcni

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Yea, but that's because there's 2 memory controllers built into P35. With x38 I don't know if this will be the case. I also would like to see DDR2 support on it, because 2 years is a long time to wait to pay reasonable prices for such marginal performance improvement.
 

BUFF

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X38 unofficially will support DDR2.
Companies like abit & Gigabyte are planning both DDR2 & DDR3 version X38 mobos & I'm sure that someone will do an either/or combo.
 

exarrkun

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and, not to forget, DFI :pt1cable: