Intel seems to have caught all the bad habits from its rival AMD when it comes to delays. The chip manufacturer has sent out a notice to its business partners to inform them that the much-wanted X48 chipset won't kick in anytime soon.

The X48 has been re-scheduled its launch date to " WW12", which means that the chip will arrive in March. According to the note, no motherboard manufacturer will be able to start production of X48-based motherboards, including the top-tier vendors such as Asus, Gigabyte or MSI. The X48 chipset is merely following into the 45-nanometer quad-core processors' footsteps, since it got pushed back from the early Q1 release to March.

Both the X48 chipset and the quad-core processors have been slated for a Q1 release, but as of the moment of writing, the company has not announced the official unveiling date, which should be regarded like the company being unable to have stuck to its announced roadmap. One thing is for sure: the delay is not related with the initial rumor alleging that one of the first-tier motherboard makers still holds a large volume of X38-powered motherboards.

The chipset seems to be delayed by the same factor(s) that prevent the 3.2 GHz QX9770 processors from hitting the retailers' shelves. The X48 chipset will support the 1600 MHz front side bus (the actual FSB speed of the QX9770 powerhorse), and if it succeeds in making it on the market until March, it will be just in time to compete with Nvidia's upcoming nForce 790i product.

Should you look for somebody to blame for this delay, you'd better start yelling at AMD. If the chip manufacturer had succeeded in releasing its fixed versions of Phenom the competition between Intel and AMD would have been tighter. AMD has a long way ahead until it catches up with Intel (if ever), and Intel can afford delaying its products as much as it wants.