Nick Race03 November 2008, 3:00 PM
This smoking new CPU from Intel does away with Frontside Bus altogether and brings a technology back from the dead.
Page 5 - Tylersburg: Intel's enthusiast motherboard chipset
As Nehalem processors aren’t compatible with existing motherboard chipsets, the first on the block to support the new chips is Intel’s own X58 Express performance chipset codenamed Tylersburg. Intel’s motherboard integrating the X58 chipset is the “Smackover” DX58SO.
X58 boards will be available at Nehalem’s launch from a number of vendors including GIGABYTE, MSI, Asus and EVGA. Though X58 is an enthusiast chipset (with multiple graphics card and cooling options) there will be lower-end SKUs shortly after today's launch for other parts of the market, such as home entertainment or budget solutions.
X58 has also undergone major changes from the X48 chipset, such as removing the memory controller and integration of QPI to talk to the processor. X58 still uses DMI to talk to the southbridge, and PCI Express 2.0 to communicate with add-on cards and graphics options.
For enthusiasts and gamers, of note is the (optional) integration of NVIDIA SLI capability into an Intel motherboard, so at least some X58 motherboards will support both NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire multi-GPU setups. The SLI support is allowed through an NVIDIA certification scheme, and only for X58 motherboards. The support only extends to a 2 way x16 SLI configuration or a 3-way 16x and 2x 8x setup.