The Eaglelake chipset family is the successor to Bearlake family, which is also known as the ” Intel 3 series,” with chipsets like the P31, P35, G33, G35 and X38. When Eaglelake arrives it will be called the Intel 4 series in stores, and the names will be pretty much the same, but +10. P45 and G45 are the first chipsets slated for arrival in Q2 2008. These will basically add better and more FSB (1600 MHz) and DDR3 support, and in the case of G35; DirectX 10, HDMI and DisplayPort, TC Magazine reports. Even though the Bearlake series was intended as PCIe 2.0, Eaglelake will be the first series from Intel that will have official support for PCIe 2.0 in the mid-range and low-end segment.
About two weeks ago we found out that Intel plans to launch the Intel DX48BT in Q1 2008. And while this is still very much true, it seems that the motherboard manufacturers are not far behind. One party even claims to be far ahead (more about that later on). When Intel was about to launch X38, there was a lot of talk about it having only support for DDR3, which wasn’t entirely true. X38 also supported DDR2-667 and DDR2-800, but it was up to the motherboard manufacturers to actually implement it.
But with X48 it actually seems that it will be DDR3 exclusive. It will also add support for [XMP] DDR3-1600, and be the first to have official 1600 MHz FSB support. Several motherboards with the X38 have this support already, but not officially from Intel. There are a few slight limitations with the DDR3-1600 support on the X48 though, first of all DDR3-1600 modules can only be used in singles. No dual channel support.
Second there are no 1600:1200 or 1600:800 dividers. Not that is any significant loss as there are rather few (good) DDR3-800 modules, and even less that appeal to the overclockers, same applies to DDR3-1200. There are 1600:1600 and 1600:1066 dividers, beside the regular 800, 1066 and 1333 dividers we have with the X38.
This and some more can be found over at HKEPC (babelfish’d).
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