One of the biggest disappointments is that Santa Rosa won't be DirectX 10 compliant:
Eden said in no uncertain terms that Santa Rosa will not be DX10 compliant on release, a feature that was expected. In light of the Intel announcement at CeBIT that G965 would never make the DX10 cut, it is not entirely surprising that GM965 won't get there immediately.Santa Rosa is expected next month.
It is a programmable architecture, so theoretically you can squeeze a DX10 out of it. But a year or so on from launch, Intel seems incapable of doing so. With every driver promise relating to this chipset not yet fulfilled, you have to wonder if GM965 will ever make the DX10 cut.