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Intel reference Ibex-Peak motherboard spotted

by on22 August 2008

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Intel shows it off during IDF

Although it's a year or so until Intel will launch the Ibex-Peak chipset alongside the Havendale and Lynnfield processors, Intel has been showing off an early development board at IDF. Compared to the X58 motherboards which are full to the brim with components, this motherboard looks almost bare.

There are some interesting things that are worth pointing out, first of all, the Ibex-Peak is a single chipset solution, which clears up a lot of space on the motherboard, much as with some of Nvidia's solutions. It seems like the specific model shown is meant for Havendale processors with integrated graphics, as the board features what appears to be a DisplayPort connector as well as a D-sub connector.

Next it appears to have a Mini card slot with room for a second at the rear of the board. This is either for test purposes or possibly for Intel's new turbo memory modules, as this would allow Intel to use the same modules in notebooks and desktops.

It also seems like Intel has finally added more PCIe lanes, as there are two x16 slots, although we presume they're limited to x8 bandwidth, but there's also a x4 and a x1 slot on the board which is hopefully an indication of more PCIe lanes.

On the downside, it looks like Intel has gone for a very basic 3-phase power regulation on this board, but as it's a development board, we wouldn't read too much into it. It's too hard to tell if the socket 1160 processors will use the same CPU coolers as the Core i7 processors, but maybe some clever person can figure that out by measuring the holes on the motherboard relatively to something else on the board and let us know.

You can find several pictures of the board here
Last modified on 23 August 2008
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