Content archived from www.custompc.co.uk
Inside Intel's X38 chipset
We take a look through the features of Intel's new enthusiast chipset - X38
Intel's use of the word 'Extreme' often makes it look like an embarrassing Dad showing off his groovy dance moves to your mates. The company's Extreme graphics were about as extreme as Val Doonican, and the Pentium Extreme Edition soon earned the nickname 'Expensive Edition.' Nevertheless, Intel is still insisting on using the word to describe its XMP (Extreme Memory Profiles) technology, which looks very similar to Nvidia's SLI Memory. It's all a part X38: Intel's new motherboard chipset for enthusiasts.
X38 replaces the aging and non-competitive 975X, and you could look at it as the company’s attempt to draw gamers away from Nvidia’s SLI. While the P35 chipset provides 16 PCI-E lanes for the primary graphics card slot, and only four lanes for the secondary graphics slot, the X38 chipset, like Nvidia’s nForce 680i, provides 16 PCI-E lanes for both graphics card slots, plus a third PCI-E slot with eight lanes. In real terms, this means that X38 motherboards should perform better, overclock further and run CrossFire faster than P35 motherboards.
Unlike the nForce 680i, the two primary slots are PCI-E 2.0-compatible; they will work with your current PCI-E 1.1 card as normal, but will give a PCI-E 2.0 graphics card twice as much bandwidth. Quite what you’re supposed to do with the third slot is beyond us though; although ATi and Nvidia have made various proclamations about using a third graphics card for physics calculations, no actual products have been forthcoming.
Like the P35, the X38 chipset is paired with either the ICH9 or ICH9R Southbridge. The X38 Northbridge supports both DDR2 and DDR3 memory (but not at the same time, of course). And as a new Intel chipset, there’s support for a 333MHz FSB (1,333MHz, effective) and 45nm CPUs such as the forthcoming Penryn-based chips.
The X38 chipset’s other new feature is XMP, which, in a typical display of IT industry illiteracy, stands for Extreme Memory Profiles. This works in much the same way as the EPP profiles used by Nvidia’s SLI Memory, storing additional information about the RAM’s capabilities, which is then transmitted to the BIOS in an effort to make overclocking easier.
Considering how long Intel has taken to bring the X38 chipset to market (975X was released in late 2005), it’s disappointing that the only tangible difference between it and the P35 chipset is more PCI-E lanes and a few ideas borrowed from Nvidia.
Unfortunately, and contrary to pre-release rumours, X38 doesn’t support two graphics cards in SLI either, so you’ll have to buy an nForce SLI motherboard for this. ATi CrossFire support is present, as on the P35. As Intel officially describes the X38 as a ‘performance’ chipset, it’s fair to expect it to outperform ‘mainstream’ P35 chipset motherboards. However, we’re bound by an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) about the performance of the chipset at the moment so you’ll have to wait for the full story.
