After announcing that its upcoming Nehalem architecture will be branded as Intel Core i7, the Santa Clara-based chip manufacturer is rumored to be working on a new chipset, which will be targeted at the small and medium business users. The rumors are yet to be confirmed but, from the looks of it, the company will be releasing a new chipset that has some similarities with its current Q45 and Q43 products.

According to the Expreview website, which managed to get their hands on a presentation slide of a new Intel product, the company is expected to release a new chipset that will be dubbed B43, sometime in Q1 2009. The new chipset won't bring support for the upcoming Core i7 processors, but rather for the company's current Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processor lineup. The chipset is expected to be paired with the ICH10D Southbridge, just like the Q45 and Q43. However, unlike the latter, the new B43 will offer a different set of features.

As with all reports on upcoming, unconfirmed new products, details regarding Intel's future desktop chipset are scarce. The B43 features include the Intel Standard Manageability, Intel Upgrade Service, DirectX 10 support and integrated DVI/Display Port. It will not come with Intel SIPP, integrated TPM1.2 or Matrix Storage Technology. Other features include support for DDR-800 or DDR3-1066 and 1333MHz FSB.

DirectX 10, coupled together with the dual independent display outputs, will enable users to enjoy Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. This, in turn, will allow system builders to provide customers with some decently priced desktop computer systems, which will not require a separate discrete graphics card.

As mentioned above, the B43 will allegedly not support Intel's processors codenamed Nehalem, but this is yet to be confirmed by the company, which will probably do so once it rolls out the first Core i7 products later this year.