MSI has dropped a few pictures of its fancy X58 Eclipse motherboard featuring Intel's X58 and ICH10R chipsets. With this board MSI has decided to use normal copper and heat-pipe cooling rather than their circu-pipe cooling that in my humble opinion looks awful. The board is made out of high-quality components only such as solid aluminum capped capacitors, Hi-C capacitors around the CPU area, sealed ferrite chokes, and Intersil ISL6336 PMWs. The board features MSI's DrMOS MOSFET + Driver IC 6-phase power source design and removable PCIe x1 based 7.1 Creative X-FI audio controller with EAX 4.0 HD support. The board also features a handful of switches and buttons. MSI is providing power, reset, and DLED2 on/off buttons as well as a dip-switch for changing the base clock speeds to 133, 166, or 200MHz at POST time. Several LED status indicators are also informing you for everything from standby mode to QPI phase status. Finally the MSI X58 Eclipse can take up to three PCIe 2.0 x16 graphics cards, a total of ten SATA drives and twelve USB 2.0 devices. More pictures are available here.

Patriot Memory, a global provider of premium quality memory module and flash memory solutions, today announced the release of their Viper series Tri-Channel memory kits designed for the forthcoming Intel Core i7/Intel X58 Express Chipset. Available in both 3GB and 6GB kits, these newly engineered memory kits come with the award winning Viper series heat shields and are the perfect balance of speed and latency while achieving lower voltage requirements.

"Intel's Nehalem architecture shows significant improvements over previous platforms," says Les Henry, Technical Director for Patriot Memory.

"High performance DDR3 DIMMs from Patriot Memory, combined with the phenomenal memory bandwidth & processing capability of Intel's upcoming Core i7 microprocessors, will deliver exciting levels of performance to PC enthusiasts worldwide," said, Steve R. Peterson, Intel's Director of Chipset & Graphics Marketing.

The P6T WS Professional workstation motherboard is the ideal foundation for a powerful workstation-capable of delivering powerful and dependable performance; together with unparalleled I/O scalability for the most demanding tasks and upgrades in the future. Through ASUS' innovative design, the P6T WS Professional is able to support both SLI and CrossFireX technologies in order to deliver extreme and incredible graphical processing performance. Furthermore, it is also equipped with 2 built-in SAS connectors and 2 PCI-X slots onboard to allow users the flexibility of choice in multiple storage solutions. With such diverse features; and the capability to deliver extreme power efficiency through the ASUS EPU, the P6T WS Professional is a 'thoroughbred' that delivers both performance and improvements in the quality of work.

ASUS, the world's leading producer of motherboards, today unveiled the most advanced and highest performing enthusiast motherboard at present: the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Rampage II Extreme. In keeping with ROG's commitment to producing cutting-edge, boundary-redefining products for the serious gaming and overclocking community, the ROG Rampage II Extreme incorporates the latest innovations and components into its architecture, such as the latest Intel chipset and SLI/CrossFireX on Demand-delivering blistering performance through its support for the new range of Intel processors and multi-GPU technologies such as 3-Way SLI and CrossFireX. To enable users to push the capabilities of the new platform to the limit, the ROG Rampage II Extreme features ROG Extreme Engine, a true multi-phase power management system-16 phases for the CPU and 3 phases each for QPI/DRAM, the Northbridge and memory-with premium Multilayer type Polymer Capacitors (ML Caps) that keep the power supply stable even under the most demanding loads.

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that the world's preeminent motherboard manufacturers, ASUS, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, and DFI, have all licensed NVIDIA SLI technology for their new lineup of motherboards designed to work with Intel Bloomfield CPUs and X58 chipsets. The addition of SLI to these motherboards and adoption by major OEMs including Dell and others means consumers will be able to harness the power of award-winning GeForce GPUs in single, SLI, or 3-way SLI configurations for the fastest visual computing experience on upcoming Intel Bloomfield platforms.

"Dell Gaming is known for industry-leading graphics and unparalleled performance," said Patrick Cooper, Director of Product Planning for Dell Gaming. "With the marriage of NVIDIA SLI and the latest generation of Intel chipsets, we will continue to offer hardcore gamers the opportunity to push their Alienware systems beyond the limits of today's hottest titles."

Expreview has got its hands on the NVIDIA Forceware Beta Driver 180.32 and used it to setup and enable SLI with two Galaxy GTX260-216, on an Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard. The cards scored a 3DMark Vantage score of P21623, compared against a single card score of P10920 gives an approximate 98% increase. Currently it is only possible to enable SLI officially on NVIDIA based chipsets, only AMD's equivalent Crossfire system works on Intel chipsets. It is evident that the 180 series of Forceware drivers from NVIDIA (dubbed Big Bang II) not only brings multi-monitor SLI support, but also paves the way to enabling SLI on the Intel X58 Chipset. In another article, Expreview have also mentioned that the beta driver 180.42, will be officially released from NVIDIA later on today, with the final version set for November 17th this year, coinciding with the launch of Intel's Core i7 and X58.

Corsair has announced the availability of two tri-channel DDR3 memory kits for the upcoming Core i7-supportive X58 platform. Corsair claims to have extensively tested these kits for stable operation on various X58 chipset-based motherboards. The kits are value-oriented, and come under the XMS3 series.

There's a 3GB (3x 1GB, model: TR3X3G1333C9) kit, and a 6 GB (3x 2GB, model: TR3X6G1333C9) kit. Both kits operate at 1333 MHz, with timings of 9-9-9-24. The modules use simplistic aluminum heatspreaders, with no fancy DHX cooling mechanisms. This could be attributed to the fact that they are value oriented, and that they could be operating at low voltages of 1.60V, and therefore, small thermal footprint. The 3 GB kit is priced at US $ 167, while the 6 GB kit is priced at $ 316.

Foxconn has definitely taken serious steps to claim its place in the race for market supremacy with premium motherboards these days. Their high-end motherboard range is diversified into the Digital Life series for the premium all-rounder motherboards, and Quantum-Force for enthusiast and gamer-grade boards. Foxconn's addition to the Quantum-Force series based on the new Nehalem-supportive X58 chipset, is the Blood Rage.

To quickly run you through the features, it is an enthusiast board for overclockers and gamers alike. It only features three DDR3 DIMM slots, while featuring four PCI-Express x16 slots, supporting both ATI CrossfireX and NVIDIA SLI. It supports DDR3 1800 memory (OC), and a 14 phase hybrid CPU power circuit featuring DirectFET MOSFET technology. The board features a 4-in-1 chipset cooler technology, which can serve purposes of a air-cooling (DIY), water-cooling, and cavity for liquid-nitrogen cooling, much like the Black Ops motherboard. Sound is modularised, with a bundled Foxconn SONAR X-Fi sound card. The board supports SAS storage. What a drool!

SUPoX follows other tier-one manufacturers such as ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, with its motherboard based on the Intel "Tylersburg" X58 chipset. The motherboard supports the upcoming Intel Core i7 series processors, with its LGA-1366 socket. Perhaps it sticks to older memory specifications from Intel, that stated the i7 processors to support DDR3-1066 memory standard. It features three long PCI-Express x16 slots. The two red ones do x16, x16 when two video cards are connected. When all three slots are populated, the PCI-Express lanes arrange as x16 (red), x8 (red 2), x8 (yellow).

Optionally, the package includes Q-Fi wireless network controller. The six SATA II ports routed to the ICH10R southbridge provide RAID functions. Additional controllers handle E-SATA and two internal ports, and the E-IDE port. As with most X58 motherboards, it features six DDR3 DIMM slots for tri-channel memory. There's no word out on its pricing and availability yet.

After flaunting the P6T Series motherboards, and the monstrous Rampage II Extreme, ASUS decided to expand its Bloomfield CPU-supportive motherboard lineup with its workstation-class offerings. ASUS is known for bringing in workstation boards on desktop platforms. They have had Intel 975P based workstation boards, just as they had nForce 590 SLI boards. These desktop-thru-worksation platforms are usually single CPU socket platforms, with certain workstation features, such as PCI-X interface, enterprise-grade storage controllers, among other features that make them durable and suitable for mission-critical environments. They don't sport enterprise chipsets, and hence carry batch-leading desktop chipsets.

With Nehalem and the new Socket 1366, ASUS did just that, with the inclusion of two single-socket workstation boards. These motherboards, at the outset support the upcoming Core i7 processors, and have the potential to support Xeon processors that use the same socket, or even the same core. There are two models lined-up: P6T6 WS Revolution and P6T6 WS Pro. The P6T6 WS Revolution is the flagship board. It features six full-length PCI-Express slots, which might have variable number of available PCI-Express lanes, depending on the number of PCI-E cards connected. It features a 16+2 phase CPU power circuit. The board features the Tylersburg X58 chipset, along with an ICH10 series southbridge. There is passive cooling for the VRM area, northbridge, and a large southbridge block, that could be possibly cooling a supplementary PCI-Express switch chip. Storage options include Serial-attached SCSI (SAS), SATA II and e-SATA ports.

One of our readers sent us the link to a TweakTown story that gives an exclusive look at DFI's latest LANPARTY UT X58 motherboard. I won't bother you with the Intel X58 specs you probably already know by heart. Pictures speak enough for themselves:This is a working sample. Although there's no adequate cooling on the northbridge and the southbridge there'll be one in the retail version and it'll probably be supplied by Thermalright. DFI plans to charge over $300 for this motherboard.

During the final weeks before Intel's Nehalem release date, we have covered almost any motherboard that will be simultaneously available as the platform launches. Today we'll accentuate on Biostar's T-Power X58, yet another LGA1366 mainboard that will help Core i7 buyers. The board is pretty much standard, it has a 12-phase power design, 6x DDR3 1333/1600/2000 slots, 3x PCI-E 16x SLI and CrossFireX capable slots, and 6x SATA + 2x eSATA + 1 IDE ports. The T-Power X58 also features a heat-pipe cooling system, on-the-fly power/reset buttons, and a LED POST code display. There's also a 7.1 integrated audio, two 10/100/1000 LANs, and two FireWire ports.

Following the launch of Nehalem architecture based CPUs from Intel, motherboard vendors would introduce their fleets of motherboards into the market, all of which are based on the new extreme performance chipset from Intel, the X58. MSI on its part, has three models lined-up. There is a performance segment X58 Platinum, followed by an enthusiast-grade X58 Eclipse. There's an even higher model, whose name is under the wraps for now. This model would cater to the market of super-overclockers.

A company slide showing model-specific features has surfaced. It can be seen that all motherboards MSI has to offer, support both ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU technologies. X58 Platinum and Eclipse offer SLI support without the presence of the nForce 200 chipset, while the super-overclocker board uses it. X58 Eclipse sports 3 PCI-Express x16 slots, making it 3-way SLI capable. X58 comes with two such slots. The highest offering, however, has four slots. Perhaps it helps set-up 3-way SLI for graphics plus one card dedicated to handle PhysX calculations, and of-course, 4-way ATI Crossfire X.

Apparently NVIDIA has decided to give all Intel owners a big present by introducing the native support of its SLI technology for Intel Nehalem. This information was published first at The Tech Report by Scott Wasson, and comes directly from the final editors meeting of NVISION. According to Tom Peterson, director of Technical Marketing for MCP products at NVIDIA, the company will authorize native SLI support on Intel X58 motherboards without the need of its nForce 200 chip - under certain circumstances. Those circumstances actually include a certification process of every Intel X58 motherboard at NVIDIA's Santa Clara certification lab. Once in the lab, the boards must pass basic testing for functionality, slot placement, and other criterions. After that the makers of these boards must select from a menu of licensing options available to them. Afterward to be certified boards will also be required to display an "SLI Certified" logo on their boxes and other marketing materials. Once the above steps are completed without a problem, NVIDIA will provide the board maker with an approval "cookie" key that it must embed in the system BIOS. The combination of this approval key and an Intel X58 chipset will then unlock SLI support in NVIDIA's ForceWare driver software. The whole process of certification is reported to be cheaper than the cost of the nForce 200 chip alone, which is around US $30. That's the interesting part you need to know, now we wait. The full story is posted here.

Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors (codenamed Nehalem) will use the new X58 chipset and the ICH10-R Soutbhridge. DRR3 memory can be installed in six slots running DDR3-800, 1066 and 1333.

The board we took photos of is a protoype that's why you can see manual soldering and cabling on it.

Motherboard vendors are preparing rigorously for catering to the market that the upcoming Intel Core i7 series processors generate. The processors are based on a new 1366-pin land grid array (LGA-1366) socket and would require you to purchase a compatible motherboard. ASUS had recently revealed that it would be in a position to make its LGA-1366 offerings available by launch-day of the Core i7. Gigabyte is getting ready with its high-end offering, the GA-X58-EXTREME, TweakTown caught more than just a glimpse of it.