Gigabyte Technology, a leading mainboard maker, on Thursday released a statement concerning the introduction of Intel’s i925XE core-logic that aims high-end computers.

The recently released core-logic sets from Intel - i915G, i915P, i925X and derivatives – brought dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM memory, PCI Express x16 and x1 lanes for add-in cards, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (i915G only), 4 Serial ATA-150, high-definition (Azalia) audio as well as some other important capabilities, such as integrated WLAN or promising RAID technologies.

Intel’s i925X core-logic was said to deliver from 2% to 7% performance increase over systems powered by Intel’s former flagship offering i875P at the same clock-speed of central processing unit. However, even more important performance benefit from the previous generation is likely to be driven not only by silicon innovations, but by pure boost of processor system bus up to 1066MHz, something that will be supported by i925XE.

“The i925XE is a twin of i925X, but it finally supports 1066MHz processor system bus. The bandwidth of 1066MHz PSB is 8.5GB/s, as opposed to the 6.4GB/s with 800MHz Quad Pumping Bus. Running with dual-channel DDR2 533MHz memory, the system is able to run PSB and RAM synchronously, as both the total bandwidth and the basic clock speed are the same,” Gigabyte said in the statement.

1066MHz processor system bus is likely to be utilized by Intel’s future Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors.

Some sources earlier this year suggested that Intel Corp. may add support for 667MHz DDR2 memory into its chipsets, as other makers of core-logic products do not hesitate to indicate this in the roadmaps.

“There is, however, one thing that Intel distinctly ignores in its roadmaps: there is no mention of DDR2 667MHz memory, although all three DDR2 speed grades have been standardized by JEDEC in January 2004. As more and more 667 DIMMs are becoming available, we suppose that Intel will end up supporting the faster memory. For one thing, the benchmarks clearly benefit from it (see below), and for another, the chipset did not cause any problems running at up to DDR2-740. Finally, motherboard makers don't even need to redesign their boards,” Gigabyte Technology added.

“The i925XE internally does not differ from 925X and even the price is unchanged: both are $50 at 1000 quantities,” the Taiwan-based mainboard maker said.

Gigabyte did not reveal launch dates for the i925XE chipset, but said “Intel will also release 915GV at the same time”. The i915GV chipset along with i915GL product are set to be formally unveiled in September, 2004.

Intel Corp. typically does not comment on unreleased products.