Motherboard makers show Intel’s upcoming chip sets

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Mar 14, 20072 mins

Several manufacturers show off designs based on Intel's forthcoming P35 and G33 chip sets at CeBIT

Motherboard makers are showcasing products based on two of Intel’s upcoming PC chip sets, which are due for release during the middle of this year.

Micro-Star International, Giga-Byte Technology, Universal Abit, and Foxconn Electronics, among others, are showing motherboards based on the unreleased P35 Express and G33 Express chip sets at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany. Chip sets are the components that connect a computer’s processor with its memory as well as peripherals, such as an add-in graphics card or hard-disk drive.

The P35 Express chip set offers support for a 1,333MHz front-side bus and can support both DDR2 (double data rate 2) memory, as well as faster DDR3 memory. It also supports Intel’s Robson cache technology, which uses flash memory to improve system performance and can be used to boot a PC more quickly.

Motherboard makers are pitching the P35 as crafted to work with Intel’s upcoming quad-core desktop processors, which will be made using a 45nm process and pack up to 6MB of on-chip cache.

The other chip set on display, Intel’s G33 Express, also offers support for the 1,333MHz front-sde bus and DDR3 memory. Unlike the P35, the G33 also includes an integrated graphics processor that eliminates the need for an add-in graphics card.

Correction: This story as originally posted incorrectly described the speed of the front-side bus supported by the P35 chip set. The article has been amended.