14 DAY TRIAL // INTEL has a lot of plans lately. And judging by the number of new released products, they seem to have hit a goldmine. Aside from the already available P35, G35 and later on the blazing-fast X38 chipset, they will also release two value-level chipsets in the next quarter, the G31 and P31 Express series.
The new G31 and P31 Express products will be released in order to replace the low end 946GZ, 946PL and 945G Express motherboards. The G31 and P31 Express are below G33 Express in INTEL's roadmaps and there's a good reason for that since the newcomers are not Bearlake-based. The Intel G31 and P31 Express chipsets are actually based on the 945 series but they will come with full support for Yorkfield and Wolfdale CPU series.
Features wise, the G31 and P31 Express are comparable to older 945-based MoBos supporting INTELs processors with a 1066 MHz FSB. Official support for the upcoming 1333MHz CPUs will arrive in the beginning of 2008 but the chipsets will not receive support for DDR2/DDR3 above the 800MHz-DDR mark.
On the southbridge side, the new chipsets will support only older products such as ICH7, ICH7R and ICH7DH southbridges and they will also pack a reworked VGA chip based on the GMA950 series. Dubbed GMA 3100, this one will be present only on the G31 and will be essentially a newer version of the GMA 950 packing the same set of features.
The GMA 3100 graphics core will also do away with hardware T&L and Intel Clear Video Technology. As a result pixel and vertex shader functions will be purely software-based. According to INTEL, the two new chipsets will arrive in the fall of 2007, at about the same time when the first 45nm units will enter the market.
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