Although it should be officially launched at the Computex in early June, the Intel P45 chipset which replaces the P35 already exists and is functional. For the moment, it’s only in the A0 version, but the final A2 should arrive in sample form starting at the end of March for motherboard production that will start in mid-April.
In itself, the P45 is just a minor evolution of the P35. There is still FSB1333; however, the change is made from DDR3-1066 to DDR3-1333 (in practice this setting already functions) and from 8 to 16 GB of memory. PCI Express 2 support is also present just like with the X38. Note that there will be a less expensive version, the P43, which will be limited to 8 GB of memory and PCI Express 1.0, suggesting simply a renamed P35. As for the ICH, no major changes with the ICH10 but it will have standard support of 6 SATA in AHCI, while the classic ICH9 only supports 4 SATA without AHCI (versus 6 in AHCI for a more expensive ICH9R). Of course, RAID will remain limited to the « R » version.
While waiting for a more complete line, Gigabyte will have only two models : the GA-P45-DS3R and GA-P45-DS4. The latter being more in the high end, it will integrate a heatpipe based cooling system as well as a 3rd PCI-E x16 slot.
For MSI, no less than five P45 motherboards were presented at their stand! The P45 Neo is a basic model in DDR2 while the P45 Neo3 adds a heatpipe based cooling system. Next comes the P45 Platinum with a DDR2 and DDR3 version (a combination of the two should arrive later), adding amongst other things two additional SATA (for a total of 8), a second PCI Express x16 port and new MOSFETS specific to MSI. This last component is called DrMos and is announced as being more efficient and heating up less. Finally, the P45 Diamond goes even further by integrating a PCI Express IDT bridge which allows having 3 graphic ports as well as no less than 13 SATA ports !
Finally, ASUSTeK presents three motherboards in its P5Q line based on the P45: the P5Q-E and P5Q Deluxe in DDR2, and the P5QC with a combined DDR2/3. The 4th P45 is the Maximus II Extreme which is equipped with Fusion Block type cooling and a Crosslinx system which enables a 3rd graphic port.
