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Originally published at Internet.com
As expected, Intel this week formally unveiled the company's new 3 Series chipset family, dubbed "Bearlake."
The launch had been highly anticipated in part due to some of the new features offered by the Bearlake chipsets, which include the G33, G35 Express, Q33 and Q35 Express, P35 and X38. Among those features are support for new higher-performance components, increased energy efficiency and noise reduction.
The announcement took place at the Computex show in Taiwan.
"There is a tremendous amount of excitement and anticipation for our forthcoming 45nm Hi-K processors based on the Intel Core microarchitecture," said Sean Maloney, Intel's chief sales and marketing officer, in a statement. "The Intel 3 Series chipsets lay the foundation for an exciting, media-rich experience for today's systems and those that arrive later this year."
Alongside a 1333/1066/800MHz system bus, the chipsets offer two cutting-edge features: 1333MHz DDR3 memory and PCI Express 2.0. Both DDR3 (which Bearlake supports in addition to existing 800MHz DDR2 memory) and PCI Express 2.0 represent significantly faster versions of current technology.
DDR3 in particular reduces energy costs while improving throughput. Intel's Turbo Memory caching feature also requires PCI Express 2.0. The chipsets also support Intel High Definition 7.1-channel audio and Intel Quiet System Technology, which manages system fan speeds to reduce noise.
In addition to current Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors, the chipsets will also be compatible with Intel's upcoming 45nm "Penryn" CPUs, due for launch later in the year.
The two Intel G33 and G35 Express chipset models come with integrated graphics, and support HD playback and HDMI output. In the G33's case, that's based on Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 and Intel Clear Video technology. The higher-end G35, of which fewer details have been made available, supports Microsoft DirectX 10.
The P33 and P35 Express sport a similar feature set, but lack on-board graphics in lieu of support for discrete graphics cards. Meanwhile, the X38 is an enthusiast-grade part and supports dual graphics, Intel said.
The G33 and P35 Express chipsets are currently available on a number of vendors' motherboards. On the other hand, the Q33 and Q35 Express models are shipping only now, targeting a third-quarter launch. The G35 Express and X38 are expected to ship to manufacturers in 90 days.
In related news, during his keynote at Computex, Maloney also talked up Intel's plans for a new Core 2 Extreme notebook processor. Little else was disclosed about that product, which is expected in third quarter.
Author: Christopher Saunders
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