It was not so long ago that we were looking over the X38 chipset and marveling at the fact that it supported “up to” 1600 FSB – even if it was only through overclocking. Now Intel has come out with its replacement as the top dog in the chipset pile – the X48 – and has declared that this chipset has the advantage over the X38 due to its “official” support for FSBs of up to 1600MHz! So what’s going on? Did the X38 actually deserve the attention given to it, or was it just holding a seat for the X48’s eventual attendance of this chipset party? Read on and find out.

                                             Testosterone-filled packaging is the norm, claws, diamond plate, airships, aliens, you name it.                        
 

The X48 chipset should have been the ideal partner for when Intel’s 45nm chips arrived, and in fact, Intel was planning to release said chipset a little bit later in quarter 2 of this year – only, AMD has come out (against expectation) with their quad core Phenom before the year 2007 ended. Intel in response released engineering samples of their QX9770 to selected reviewers / press, and what better chipset to support this than the X48? Never mind the X38, yeah? Well, that depends – on whether you’ve plunked down your hard-earned cash on the X38 or looking at the (minuscule) price difference between the two chipsets.

                                             Board shot.

Officially, the X48 adds support for Intel’s own QX9770 quad core and bumps up the FSB support to 1600MHz. Other than this two bullet points, the X48 is practically the same as the X38. The X38 already had support for dual channel DDR3, four physical PCI-E x16 slots (not to be confused with the number of lanes assigned to the slot), and PCI-E 2.0 technology. The two motherboards based on each chipset respectively look very similar as well, and could be mistaken for each other.

                                             MSI's Circu-Pipe slimmed down and improved.

Unofficially, the X48 chipsets are rumored to be “cherry-picked” chipsets – similar to how XFX chooses higher – headroom and thus easier-to-overclock Nvidia chips for their special edition cards. The X38 is also capable of supporting older DDR2 memory, while the X48 does not officially list support for it – and it is hardly expected that a motherboard maker will integrate this support into a newly released X48 based board.

                                             Tired of beeping sounds? This gives you pretty lights instead.

If we are to follow convention according to Intel’s roadmap both for their core logic chipsets and their processors, the X48 is actually perfectly placed to be the most purchase-able motherboard chipset at the moment. Being top of the line, there is no chance for it to be superseded by another chipset pretender to the throne – except until the next generation of processors come out of course, by which time most enthusiasts will have moved on anyhow. With the X48, all the features so loved in the X38 is once again present and accounted for, in addition to the inevitable “headroom” that Intel builds into its chipsets for future upgradeability.

                                             Strange looking or not, the additional four USB sockets come in handy.

The features include all those mentioned above such as 1600MHz FSB, dual channel DDR3, four physical PCI-E x16 slots, PCI-E 2.0 technology that bumps up bandwidth to 16GBps and support for 45nm Intel processors.  Other notable features include a “dual channel PWM” for increased power efficiency, and other MSI mainstays for their higher-end boards like on-board LED diagnostics, Circu-Pipe heatpipe cooling, and Dual CoreCell for precise tweaking and adjustments. The standard connectivity options found in high-end boards are present and usually exceeded on this board – this includes six SATA connectors, four of which are angled horizontally, a total of 12 USB 2.0 sockets (8 rear plus 4 through headers), a firewire A connector, a firewire header, 2 external SATA connectors, an optical out, and the standard 7.1 channel sound sockets. Single floppy and IDE connectors are also present, and in addition to the four PCI-E x16 slots, there is also a single legacy PCI slot and two PCI-E x1 slots.

                                             A nice set of extras give flavor to a great product.

With all of these features and the fact that Intel has announced (and planned) that this is the chipset to partner with their latest and greatest processors (officially that is), there is no reason to buy into a motherboard based on an older chipset unless it offered tremendous value. Add to that the better headroom associated with a newer chipset after some production seasoning, then the X48 is the one to get for enthusiasts and power users alike – or just anyone who wants to own the best chipset coupled with one of the best motherboard manufacturers there is.

More pictures to follow.

                                             An additional chip gives four lanes each for the 3rd and 4th PCI-E x16 slots.

                                             The two main PCI-E x16 slots.