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Intel will soon be launching a new chipset for mainstream Core 2 Duo (and Core 2 Quad) processor, the much anticipated P35.

The P35 is the first chipset that will be released belonging to the "Bearlake" family - all members of which are made on a 65nm process, a which should allow for lower voltages and higher speeds. It will also bring official support for a 1333MHz FSB and DDR3 - significantly increasing the potential bandwidth between the processor, chipset and memory. The hopes of such an increase is allowing the excellent Core 2 design and future Penryn processors to better flex their digital muscles.

The P35 has a tough job ahead of it - outperforming the excellent P965 and 975X chipsets. Though neither the P965 or 975X officially supporting a 1333MHz FSB, we have been able to run at up to 2020MHz FSB in one case. Does the P35 have what it takes to outperform the current top P965/975X boards?

The P35 Northbridge provides for only one PCIe 16x slot - however vendors may implement a second PCIe 16x slot that is electrically a 4x slot, and dual channel memory, which can be configured by motherboard vendors to support either DDR2 or DDR3 modules. The FSB officially supports 800/1066/1333 MHz data rates (quad-pumped 200/266/333MHz).

P35 based motherboards with DDR3 slots will allow for memory speeds in excess of 1333MHz data rate - although this extra memory bandwidth comes at the cost of increased latencies; initial DDR3 memory modules will have a 6-6-6 or even 7-7-7-26 latencies. Frankly, we are about to go through a transition period like the start of the DDR to DDR2 switch; where the early generations of DDR2 were clearly outperformed by optimized DDR modules.

The P35 connects to an Intel Southbridge; the new ICH9R in the case of the Gigabyte P35-DS3R. The ICH9R Southbridge provides 12 USB ports, six SATA2 ports, six PCIe 1x lanes, three of which are used to provide PCIe 1x slots, a PCI bus, and connections to on-board PCIe 1x devices such as the RTL 8111B and other SATA2/IDE controllers. The BIOS chip also connects to the ICHR9, and to the audio codec and legacy (PS2. LPT & SER) port controller.

Due to non-disclosure agreements, sites are not allowed to publish benchmark results yet - however we thought we'd bring you this quick preview, just to wet your appetites for these future developments.

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