It must be noted here that all 3-series chipsets officially don't support Celeron D, Pentium 4, and Pentium D processors (as well as their Extreme Edition modifications). Let's analyze all innovations one by one.ĬPU support. We can see well that all key characteristics of the chipset have been modified. DMI bus (~2 GB/s bandwidth) to the new ICH9/R/DH/DO Southbridge.Dual-channel DDR2-533/667/800 or DDR3-800/1066/1333 memory controller, up to 4 DIMM modules with the total size of up to 8 GB (with ECC), Fast Memory Access and Flex Memory technologies.Support for new Celeron and Pentium processors as well as all Core 2 models (Duo/Quad/Extreme) with 800/1066 MHz FSB, including future models with 1333 MHz FSB.Let's enumerate the key functions of its Northbridge: The following block diagram shows the key characteristics of the X38: And now the top product is marked with the X prefix - Intel uses it to designate any general improvements (not only in chipsets, but in processors, graphics cards, etc). Note that top products used to be marked with an increased index number (i915 - i925).

It's not yet available in the market and will debut only in Q3 together with the second wave of the new chipsets. We'll start the analysis of the new chipset family with its top representative. Now we meet a new generation of chipsets, which update such important system characteristics as a system bus and memory type, as well as bring a new naming scheme.

The following two generations of chipsets ( i945/955/975 and i965) just increased FSB and memory clock rates and added support for new CPU families (dual-core processors and then Core 2). This family added the following features to desktop systems: a new socket type and power connector, DDR2 memory, PCI Express bus (including a modification for graphics cards), and High Definition Audio. Intel has sustained almost a three-year pause since it launched its revolutionary family of i9xx chipsets.

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