X38 is the new Intel chipset for desktop computers that are aimed at the high performance market, and while officially it (and all mainboards centered around it) will only arrive on the 9th of September, a number of computer hardware manufacturing companies already announced several lines on mainboards based on it.

Among the hardware manufacturers and vendors that already announced computer motherboards based on the new Intel high performance chipset, Gigabyte is the first company that said it has two mainboards centered around the X38. After the first, cheaper and less performance-oriented mainboard that integrates the X38 was announced a few days ago by Gigabyte, now is the turn of a second board that sports the very same chipset, the GA-X38-DQ6. Unlike the GA-5BXWV-RH, a relatively affordable X38-powered motherboard that will have only DDR2 memory support (only DDR2 slots in fact) and only one PCI-Express x16 slot, the more high end product named GA-X38-DQ6 will feature two PCI Express x16 slots compliant with the second PCIe standard that will support the AMD/ATI multi graphics card solution the CrossFire; unfortunately for Nvidia fans, it will offer absolutely no support for SLI.

In the processor support department, the new X38 based high end Gigabyte motherboard will support the incoming Intel CPUs built with the 45nm fabrication process like the Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPUs and frontside bus frequencies of up and including 1600MHz. In order to maintain a low manufacturing cost, Gigabyte did not fit the GA-X38-DQ6 mainboard with DDR3 memory slots, so upgrading to this motherboard will not be excessively expensive. It supports high speed DDR2 memory modules with running frequencies between 667MHz and 1066MHz while thanks to the dual channel configuration and the 4 installed DIMM slots, the total amount of system memory can be as high as 8GB.

For high speed access to storage solutions, the mainboard comes equipped with no less than 8 Serial ATA ports, while the network connectivity issue is address by the presence of two Gigabit Ethernet controllers. In order to maintain backwards compatibility with older optical and hard disk drives, the GA-X38-DQ6 also features an ATA port. An integrated high definition audio solution with 8 channels is included as well as support for HD DVD and Blu-ray. The Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 will hit the stores during the first days of the next month and it will feature a price tag just a little bit higher than the current top of the line P35 based mainboard from Gigabyte.