Intel Goes Dual Graphics With 975X Chipset

975X Chipset Diagram

The upper diagram is for the 975X, the one below this text is the 955X's. Apart from the changes in the PCI Express graphics support, there is no difference between them. All Intel Socket 775 processors are supported, including the Celeron D, Pentium 4, Pentium D, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition or Pentium Extreme Edition using the current dual core. As much as 8 GB of DDR2 memory can be used if 2 GB DIMMs are deployed (with ECC if you want). The memory controller supports dual channel operation which helps it achieve a peak bandwidth of 10.7 GB/s at 333 MHz (DDR2-667).

The southbridge part still is the current ICH7R - it includes as many as eight USB 2.0 ports and four Serial ATA II ports supporting 300 MBytes/s, hot plugging and Native Command Queuing (NCQ). In contrast to the ICH6 there are six rather than four PCI Express lanes, which can be flexibly laid out by the motherboard manufacturer (e.g. two x1 and one x4 slot). The audio controller is High Definition Audio compliant, which means it supports 7.1 channels surround and audio at 32 bit resolution and 192 KHz. A legacy PCI controller allows for as many as six 32 bit 33 MHz slots, although we doubt 975X boards will come with more than two due to space constraints. Where would six PCI slots be placed with two x16 and probably at least two more x1 or x4 PCIe type slots?