Intel X48 ships in November - chip alone costs $70

The upcoming Intel X48 chipset will be available on November 4th, according to X-bit Labs. The site reports the X48 will cost $70 in business quantities - which is a lot more than the X38 chip which costs only $50.

However, the first motherboards with the X48 won't be available yet in early November but perhaps they will be available by the end of November or in December. Intel's own X48 motherboard - the Desktop DX48BT2 "Bonetrail" - will be available in Q1 2008.

Also rumoured today is that Intel removed support for DDR3 1600MHz from the X48 chipset.

Intel X48 chipset will support processors with 1600MHz processor system bus, support dual-channel PC3-10600 (DDR3 1333MHz) memory with Intel Fast Memory access, PCI Express 2.0 bus with multi-GPU technology capability and some other performance improvements, such as flexible overclocking capabilities and extreme memory profiles (XMP) technology.

According to confidential documents seen by X-bit labs, Intel has removed support for PC3-12800 (DDR3 1600MHz) memory from the X48 platform and let mainboard makers to decide whether to support it or not. It is not completely clear why Intel decided to scrap “official” support for 1600MHz memory, a speed-bin ratified by JEDEC, but one of the reasons may be an intention to exclude possibilities when mainboard makers, system builders or others declare support for considerably higher DDR3 speed-bins on X48-based products.