Intel set to kill BTX in 2007

THE WORD IS OUT among people in the channel. According to next year's line-up, the Intel has decided not to release a single BTX motherboard. Current BTX and picoBTX motherboards will be replaced with ATX and µATX form factors.

The Bearlake chipset will be introduced in second quarter of 2007, and Intel has reserved a grand total of four products for Q2'07 with two more products in Q3'07. Dragontail Peak (Bearlake-P NorthBridge with ICH9DH SouthBridge chips) and Frostburg (BearLake-G and ICH9) are utilising the ATX form factor, while Johannesburg/Montpelier (BearLake-Q and ICH9DO) and Buffalo Creek (BearLake-G and ICH9) come in the µATX form factor.

In Q3'07, Intel will introduce Bonetrail, successor to the high-end D975XBX (known as Bad Axe) motherboard. Based on the BearLake-X chipset, this baby brings support for 1.33GHz FSB and DDR3 memory at 1.06GHz. Form factor? ATX, of course.

A final BearLake motherboard is targeted for LXIV and desktop platforms: Apache Lake is based on a refreshed BearLake-G+ chipset with ICH9DH SouthBridge chip. This baby will bring support for DirectX 10 graphics in a form of unified shaders.

Performance is still set to be mediocre, but hey - until the co-processor model with Intel's discrete parts starts to kick in, you forget about performance. µ