The latest reports on the world's leading chip manufacturer Intel have it that it is planning to extend the life-cycle of its socket 775-based processors until 2011. Moreover, the Santa Clara-based company is expected to have these chips on the market for the entry-level segment, reports news site Digitimes, citing sources at motherboard makers.

Intel's new microprocessors, dubbed Core i7, which are to be launched today, will use the new socket 1366. The company also announced, as already reported, that it planned to launch new Nehalem-based mainstream desktop PC processors in the third quarter of the next year, based on a new socket, 1156. This time next year, expect to see quite a few sockets from Intel on the market, and they will probably come to cover all market segments.

Considering that Intel's socket 775-based processors will have their life-cycle extended to 2011, the company will also have to prolong the life-cycle of the 4-series chipsets. The logical conclusion from this, as stated by Digitimes, is that the giant chip manufacturer will operate some changes to its 4-series chipsets. The modifications list would include “boosting the G45's image processing performance, and adding Post Processing and Report Mode technologies to boost the chipset's image quality and add support of 24Hz monitors,” the article says.

In addition, the G43 chipset is expected to have its memory slot support improved from the originally featured two DIMMs to four, while the memory capacity should also be increased. This would mean that the chipset should feature support for up to 16GB DDR2 and 8GB DDR3, in comparison to the current 8GB DDR2 and 4GB DDR3 it supports. The same source also states that Intel will add an HDMI port to its G41 chipsets, which will also include support for the ICH7 southbridge and RAID.