Bearlake is the next generation of chipsets from Intel, which hasn’t released a new chipset for quite a while now and in the backwaters of all the Kentsfield and Yorkfield news many are wondering what kind of goodies the next generation of chipsets will bring. HKEPC has now comes across a product map with the coming circuit based on Bearlake. We can see a whole row of chipsets for all segments, but the most interesting ones are of course Bearlake X and G+; the two equivalents of today’s i975X and i965. Both circuits sports both DDR2 and DDR3, but we assume you will only be able to use either at a time, but the X version has a trump with support for DDR3-1333 at 1333MHz FSB, if we’ve interpreted the diagram correct.
All retail chipsets will have support for DDR3, while there will also be two chipsets for the OEM and office market with mere DDR2 support.
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Other than that we can see HD audio, a new southbridge in the form of ICH9 which results in Gb Ethernet, 12 USB ports and more, but we can also see support for up to 8GB RAM. We have to say that Intel seems well prepared before the launch of the next generation of chipsets.
