A number of recent posts around the web have suggested a number of launch dates for the upcoming high-end X38 chipset from Intel. Most of them point to late September, some mention specifically the 23rd, some the 15th. No matter if the chipset is launched and/or officially unveiled on any of these very dates, we should not expect motherboards to reach stores until October at best. The motherboard manufacturers we’ve spoken to are optimistic about launching their X38 motherboards as soon as early September, but as far as we know the current boards all suffer from a bit crippled performance. It’s [b]not[/b] the hardware that is troubling the manufacturers though, but they are having problems getting the performance out of the circuit. Earlier rumors have suggested software/BIOS problems and we have a feeling this is still where the problem subsides. X38 is just fine, the software seems to need some tweaking though.
X38 will be first chipset to officially bring PCIe 2.0, dual PCIe x16 setup and only DDR3 support, but the motherboard manufacturers disagree on the last part. Several (all?) motherboard makers have DDR2 boards with X38 in the making and there will be no DDR3 forcing with X38.
The PCIe 2.0 and ATI CrossFire is a mix we’re very, very eager to try out. ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT was designed to run on PCIe 2.0 boards and CrossFire especially eats PCIe bandwidth like no other GPU setup we’ve ever encountered. If X38 and Radeon HD 2900 mixes they we want, records are going to be broken, big time.
