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Computex is here again another year of fantastic goodies waiting for the enthusiast to indulge on. I might consider taking some time off work for next years show, why not, treat yourself! This is the best time of year for computer hardware followers. Computex will be answering all my un-answered questions relating to Intel’s Nehalem processors, Larrabee and Graphics architectures.
So what have I got for you all today? Well you guessed it! Nehalem! At Computex Intel have show cased numerous vendor motherboards using the new processor architecture. Below is a picture of the new desktop based motherboard.

The motherboards will be using the x58 tylersburgDT chipset. If you look at the image above you will notice the enlarged CPU socket and shrunk chipset. Lets not forget the actual reason I write about Nehalem so much, there is no memory controller and FSB in the chipset! This means no more over-clocking is needed! Finally the revolutionary change in the computer architecture! I have a feeling that L3 cache will not be needed even L2 cache in-fact? If the memory can ideally be the same clock as the processor and FSB follows then the bottle neck is redundant! But will memory prices increase? I assume so.

If you haven’t noticed already the motherboard only includes 3/4 slots! The symmetrical memory setups are a thing of the past. The majority of the Nehalem based motherboards use asymmetric memory channels. This means that the memory can be configured into three channels. The first channel can take two dims sockets and the remaining two channels can only use one socket each. Nehalem can organise the memory addressing, this allows overflow to the remaining single socket channel.

Right with that said, Now lets move onto the server based motherboards (Skull trail 2 **COUGH**). Now you may have noticed the ram set-ups? The motherboard has 12 to 18 DIMM slots! You may think why an odd number? But the theory behind asymmetrical memory applies! Some simple math will put you all at ease. Two CPU x 3 channels x 3 DIMMS per channel, simple! Yet impressive!
Release is only months away, if my estimations are anything to go by! Start remortgaging your house its worth it!

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