X-bit labs

Intel’s Forthcoming Performance-Mainstream Chipset to Support Multi-GPU.

Category: Chipsets

by Anton Shilov

[ 04/20/2006 | 04:00 PM ]

Intel Corp.’s upcoming chipset code-named Broadwater P may see the light of the day a bit earlier than expected and may also acquire capability of multi-GPU support, something, which was earlier available only with premium class chipsets from Intel.

A news-story published by Chinese-language HKEPC web-site states that Intel may formally unveil the Intel P965 as early as on the 7^th of June, possibly at Computex Taipei 2006 trade-show and also equip its new performance-mainstream processor with ability to share the PCI Express x16 bus for graphics between two graphics cards, thus, providing support for multi-GPU technologies, such as ATI Technologies CrossFire.

Intel P965 chipset is Intel’s next-generation core-logic for performance-mainstream computers oriented on those, who wish to have the latest functionality and performance, but do not have special focus on extreme performance or multimedia capabilities – for those Intel plans to offer Intel 975X and Intel Q965 core-logic products. The P965 will be able to support dual-core and single-core processors with up to 1066MHz processor system bus as well as dual-channel DDR2 memory at 667MHz (PC-5400) and 800MHz (PC2-6400).

Originally it was expected that Intel 965-series chipsets – such as P965, Q965 and G965 – are to be announced at once, but if the story to be believed, the Q965 and G965 may be launched later than the P965.

Intel P965 chipset family was designed for accompanying the highly-anticipated code-named Conroe processors due out later this year, potentially, in July. Intel Conroe chip will utilize the new micro-architecture named Core with shorter pipeline and high performance per clock ratio. The new processors will feature 14-stages pipeline, down from 31 or more stages found in current Intel Pentium (Prescott) designs, 4-issue out-of-order execution engine as well as improved performance of the floating-point unit (FPU). Also, the new chips and platforms on their base will also feature capabilities like virtualization, LaGrande technology, x86-64 in addition to EDB, EIST and iAMT2.

Intel did not comment on the news-story.