Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed - Winston Churchill
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Taiwanese vendors are up in arms over X38 - X48 migration
JUST AS INTEL'S X38-based mainboards, which are ready to accept the current and upcoming bunch of FSB1333 CPUs, surface in the market, mobo vendors are receiving the first samples of the X48 chipset.
What is the real difference between the two? The only two improvements I know of are official FSB1600 and DDR3-1600 support and, supposedly, a couple of bugs (EIST, etc) corrected. The south bridge is the same, and everything else, too.
So, what's the point of giving it a brand new name then, forcing new mobo product names and inventory headaches? A few Taiwan vendors objected on the plan, saying that, instead, it should have simply been called a v2 version of the X38, so that their mainboards, literature and so on all stay the same, just with updated revision numbers where necessary.
Bear in mind that this is probably the last high-end single-socket PC chipset Intel will have, until Bloomfield Nehalem "extreme PC" arrives a year from now. In the meantime, Intel will have some radically improved integrated GPU chipsets, named the G4X series. So, maybe, to be in sync with those, the firm decided to name the FSB1600 refresh of X38 as X48 - a major jump without the cause.
Nevertheless, you should be fine. We were firmly advised by at least two mobo vendors that their top-of-the-line X38 board will have no problem at all taking in, say, QX9770 FSB1600 CPU and the 'official' XMP DDR2-1600 RAM when their time comes around the Lunar New Year. µ
Tags: Intel
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The socket system wasn't the most effective. There were times when the socket was the same for two or three different devices, but if you plugged in the incorrect chip, it wouldn't work. If the industry adopts a standardized format and socket structure, then that might work. The problem is this, why only sell the chip for $50-75 when you can sell a whole new motherboard for $150-200? There is a perceived loss of capital between the two, even though selling the chips costs $8-10 to manufacture and the motherboards only cost $15-20. Remember the capitalism mantra, "Don't give away something for free when you can make a buck off of it." I also like the credit card company mantra, "If anything goes wrong, the consumer pays for it, not us." This shows how broken the systems are. But, they are best ones we have tried so far...
Perhapse they should have socketed the X38 to have it replaceable by an X48.
so back to the old days of AT-XT when every chip was socketed...Oh my, what next? Socketed GPU ??? Soundcard?
As far as the mobo manufactures are concerned the new chipset is a 1 for 1 drop in replacement. They dont have to worry about "removing" a X38 chip and replacing it with a X48. The chips fit into the same solder points, all they got to do is fill the machine that places the chips on the mobo with X48 chips. They dont remove a old X38 and replace it with a X48. The problem they have is that there is not enough of a diffrence between the chips to rename it as a whole new part, They want to just append their documentation as "revison2" or sum such thing so they do not have to rewrite the materials, come up with all new ad's, and new marketing material. They would be happy to slap a sticker on the box that states "revision2". Instead of new documents in the box, they would only update the pdf on their website to list the change. It is all about them not wanting to spend the money not a manufacturing isssue.
That would be soooo nice. I mean, imagine the EASE of updating your PC! just swap chips!! That's a nice idea.