Chicago (IL) - Gigabyte is gearing up to announce a new Intel 955X-based motherboard that will support DDR2 memory clocked at up to 1066 MHz, Tom's Hardware Guide has learned. While such modules are not available commercially today, the board provides an opportunity for overclockers to extract more performance from their memory.

The new board is likely to be announced within a few days and will feature a range of components that could make it an interesting product for users who are not satisfied with off-the shelf performance of processors and memory.

The GA-8I955X Royal is based on Intel's 955X chipset for Pentium D and single- and dual-core Pentium EE processors (Socket 775). Supported FSB speed ranges from 400 MHz to 2400 MHz - with current single core Pentium EE's topping out at 1066 MHz (dual core: 800 MHz). The board can carry up to four DDR2 DIMMs at speeds of up to 1066 MHz for a maximum capacity of 8 GByte.

Additional features include a dual power system, dual BIOS capability, 6 SATA II ports, dual Gbit Ethernet, RAID 0, 1, and 0+1, 8 USB 2.0 interfaces, 3 Firewire ports, 3 cooling fan pin headers, as well as a RFID-based remote control to power up the board.

According to sources, available system memory multipliers are 1.5, 2.0-, 2.0, 2.5, 2.66, 3, 3.33, and 4; PCI Express frequency ranges from 90 MHz to 150 MHz. Charts seen by Tom's Hardware Guide indicate that memory scores in PCMark 2004 reached 7199 points with a 3.73 MHZ Pentium EE system (FSB 276 MHz x4, DDR2-1104). The used memory was overclocked A-Data DDR2-800.

There was no information on pricing and availability.

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