The "official" release of Intel's X48 chipset is on the horizon, which means the major manufacturers are readying their products for release. We already have several X48 boards in-house that we are running through the paces and feel confident enough to start providing a few unique performance previews over the coming days

Since 780i is 680i with an added chip to support PCI 2.0 and two more x16 PCIe ports, it looked for a while as if NVIDIA might actually skip the 780i launch and wait until the DDR3 generation for a new chipset launch. Refinements for Penryn compatibility were completed and NVIDIA worked with Intel for Penryn family (Yorkfield quad-core and Wolfdale dual-core) compatibility certification.

Now, almost two months later, today is the official launch day of the 780i and 750i chipset. This is not just a paper launch, since 780i motherboards are available, or will be very soon, from NVIDIA launch partners XFX and EVGA. NVIDIA calls this the launch of the NVIDIA nForce 700i Series.

From a launch perspective, it is important to understand that 780i is not a new chipset. NVIDIA has said in their press releases, "The NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI MCP is built on TSMC's 90nm process technology, and contains the same micro-architecture as the NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI MCP. However, 780i SLI was designed with a high performance interface to be paired with nForce 200 to provide next-generation PCI Express 2.0 bus capabilities."

Using sub-zero cooling methods can enable most Intel 65nm processors to scale well past 4GHz (chilled water/phase cooling), and even 5GHz using liquid Nitrogen. Even though processor cooling does make up a large part of the overclocking equation, there's more than just low operating temperature and high voltage requirements to guarantee success. The board must have stable and clean voltage delivery circuits for the CPU, Northbridge, and memory. The motherboard PCB should be at least a six layer design (with excellent trace routing) to minimize signal inductance and crosstalk. Selection of high quality transistors, resistors, and capacitors can also be critical; low tolerance, low drift, and low noise components are required to ensure accurate and stable power delivery under heavy load conditions.

Lastly, optimized board layouts and onboard device cooling options are needed, to satisfy both extreme benchmarkers and gaming enthusiasts simultaneously (this is another challenge). Manufacturers cannot afford to base a motherboard around extreme users alone. Yes, this segment is a growing industry, but the number of sales generated by this niche group will never cover the invested time/R&D for manufacturing the product. Whichever way we look at the options, there has to be component and board layout compromises to meet several different market opportunities.