14 DAY TRIAL // DirectX 11 graphics are already on their way to becoming mainstream, with even notebooks beginning to integrate such capabilities, and the Arrandale and Clarkdale processors have already seen more than a little attention. Still, even though most end-users aren't exactly preoccupied with what will come after the Consumer Electronics Show in January, companies are always thinking ahead, even releasing supporting platforms for technologies that have not yet been released. One such case is with the Gulftown hexa-core CPU, which Intel plans to release during next year's second quarter and that may have slipped out of the minds of end-users anxious for the CES releases.
Extreme users will probably gain considerable ease of mind learning that the upcoming hexa-core chip from Intel already has a number of motherboards prepared to house its power. The Intel chip will be a derivate of the Bloomfield CPU and will supposedly be compatible with LGA1366 sockets on existing X58 boards. The CPU will support hyper threading and will have an L3 cache memory of 12MB. Taiwanese manufacturer ASUS announced that its product line already boasted motherboards with built-in compatibility for the 6-core chip architecture, which the Gulftown will embody.
"This new processor architecture accommodates up to six cores and significantly improves CPU performance," Chie-Wei Lin, general manager of ASUS Motherboard Business, said. "By enabling the architecture in our award-winning X58-based motherboards, we can deliver one of the fastest personal computing platforms in history and we are very excited about it."
The actual list of motherboards and their respective BIOS versions is made out of the following products: P6X58D Premium (BIOS version 0222), P6TD Deluxe (BIOS 0209), P6T Deluxe V2 (0704), P6T Deluxe (1804), P6T SE (0608), P6T (0904) and the Rampage II Extreme (1639) and Rampage II GENE (1033).
These boards are set to become optimal support for the hexa-core 32nm chips and even the most speed-enthusiastic end-users should find the ASUS-Gulftown pairing to be more than enough to occupy their thoughts.