# MSI Launches Intel X48 Motherboards



## malware (Jan 17, 2008)

Micro-Star International (MSI) today launched its latest X48 Series motherboards based on Intel X48 Express chipset. Coming in two versions: X48 Platinum DDR3 only and X48C Platinum DDR3 & DDR2 combo, these new motherboards feature "Dual-Channel PWM", enhanced fanless cooling design "Circu-Pipe" and numerous exclusive features such as Quad graphics slots, MSI SkyTel VoIP, and all Made-in-Japan solid capacitors. Water-cooling versions of the boards are also set to come in the future.



 








*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## btarunr (Jan 17, 2008)

Drool-worthy 

The first board....there's cooling provided to three BGA chips....could the third one be the nForce 100 and that this board runs SLI?


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## HaZe303 (Jan 17, 2008)

The NB cooler is just terribly tall, no aftermarket cpu cooler will fit on there. You´ll need to remove the MB cooling if you want some bigger cpu cooler. And one thing I hate about MSI boards, they have almost always only 4 sata connections. I need atleast 6. But im quite happy with my x38 asus board, so im not intrested anyway.

Ps. One thing I do like about the platinum is both DDR2 and DDR3 are compatible with it. Hope more vendors follow this smart move.



btarunr said:


> Drool-worthy
> 
> The first board....there's cooling provided to three BGA chips....could the third one be the nForce 100 and that this board runs SLI?



I doubt it, its propably just one extra cheap southbridge from Via/Intel?? To support the extra two 16x pci-e.


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## Disparia (Jan 17, 2008)

There's six on the first board, only 4 are angled. Not so sure about the second board, possibly eSATA.


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## Tatty_One (Jan 17, 2008)

So apart from some of these coming in quad XFire flavour which means nothing to 99.999999% of consumers, what are the other differences over the x38?


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## SK-1 (Jan 17, 2008)

Tatty_One said:


> So apart from some of these coming in quad XFire flavour which means nothing to 99.999999% of consumers, what are the other differences over the x38?



The difference is +10


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## Hawk1 (Jan 17, 2008)

Tatty_One said:


> So apart from some of these coming in quad XFire flavour which means nothing to 99.999999% of consumers, what are the other differences over the x38?



Native 1600FSB support vs 1333 on the x38s. Also hear they use better parts so "supposed" to OC better, but that could just be marketing speak.


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## ktr (Jan 17, 2008)

I love how MSI does their heatpipes, its all shiny and crazy. Not like asus, who makes it dull and boring.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Jan 17, 2008)

Nice,but i'm not a big fan of the fugly circu-pipe thing.


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## HaZe303 (Jan 17, 2008)

tigger69 said:


> Nice,but i'm not a big fan of the fugly circu-pipe thing.


I agree, its damn ugly. But if it only was ugly I wouldnt care, but its ugly and stupid. I had a Gigabyte P35 DS4 rev 1.0 with the big NB cooler. No tower cooler like those from xigmatek or thermalright 120 would fit on that mobo, atleast not without breaking something. That circu-pipe thingy is much taller than the cooling on p35-ds4 so it would be impossible with anything bigger than the intel standard cooler, which is stupid.


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## cdawall (Jan 17, 2008)

it should mount fine its below the socket i could probably fit my gemini II on it and thats huge...


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## btarunr (Jan 17, 2008)

For a cookie, Will the 110 mm Zalman CNPS 9700 series coolers fit on MSI boards with Circu-pipes?


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## Deleted member 24505 (Jan 17, 2008)

I doubt it,it looks tight twixt socket and circu-pipe.


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

so i have googled around looking for this, has anyone found this for sale anywhere?


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## acperience7 (Jan 17, 2008)

The big problem I see is that two of the PCIe slots are positioned for one slot cards. So is this board forcing 3800 buyers to get two 3870's and two 3850's, instead of four 3870 cards? Or maybe I'm missing something


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

acperience7 said:


> The big problem I see is that two of the PCIe slots are positioned for one slot cards. So is this board forcing 3800 buyers to get two 3870's and two 3850's, instead of four 3870 cards? Or maybe I'm missing something



well im alittle concerned on a quad graphics platform because those last 2 slots only support 4x and that could really hinder the performance of the cards.  I think the only true quad xfire platform out now is the 790fx, and i dont feel like going to AMD procs


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## acperience7 (Jan 17, 2008)

asb2106 said:


> well im alittle concerned on a quad graphics platform because those last 2 slots only support 4x and that could really hinder the performance of the cards.  I think the only true quad xfire platform out now is the 790fx, and i dont feel like going to AMD procs


Yeah the 4x is a big disappointment to me too. I was expecting all Crossfire X boards to be x16 for all four slots.


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

acperience7 said:


> Yeah the 4x is a big disappointment to me too. I was expecting all Crossfire X boards to be x16 for all four slots.



thats what i was hoping for too


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## btarunr (Jan 17, 2008)

asb2106 said:


> well im alittle concerned on a quad graphics platform because those last 2 slots only support 4x and that could really hinder the performance of the cards.  I think the only true quad xfire platform out now is the 790fx, and i dont feel like going to AMD procs



Intel Skulltrail is x8, x8, x8, x8 the same as any 790 FX based Crossfire X board. Again, don't forget, this is PCI-Express 2.0 we're dealing with. PCI-E x8 in 2.0 specs has the same theoretical bandwidth as a PCI-E 1.1 x16 and that's more than enough for today's ATI cards. The dual-GPU HD3870 X2 anyway doesn't support Crossfire X as in four-cards.  I'm hoping the ASUS ROG Rampage Extreme to turn out this way too.


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Intel Skulltrail is x8, x8, x8, x8 the same as any 790 FX based Crossfire X board. Again, don't forget, this is PCI-Express 2.0 we're dealing with. PCI-E x8 in 2.0 specs has the same theoretical bandwidth as a PCI-E 1.1 x16 and that's more than enough for today's ATI cards. The dual-GPU HD3870 X2 anyway doesn't support Crossfire X as in four-cards.  I'm hoping the ASUS ROG Rampage Extreme to turn out this way too.



so its gonna work like the 975, and not the 965

and i thought x48 and skulltrial were 2 different things


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Intel Skulltrail is x8, x8, x8, x8 the same as any 790 FX based Crossfire X board. Again, don't forget, this is PCI-Express 2.0 we're dealing with. PCI-E x8 in 2.0 specs has the same theoretical bandwidth as a PCI-E 1.1 x16 and that's more than enough for today's ATI cards. The dual-GPU HD3870 X2 anyway doesn't support Crossfire X as in four-cards.  I'm hoping the ASUS ROG Rampage Extreme to turn out this way too.



yah, skull trail is 4x 16x and dual CPU config, completely differnet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_SkullTrail - one of many pages that say it

EDIT **** and skull trail is a socket 771 board


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## btarunr (Jan 17, 2008)

Nope, Skulltrail is a socket 775 board, designed to take in current gen Penryn processors. The board uses 32 lanes from the X48 northbridge, 16 lanes split to x8, x8 when doing SLI using the nForce 200 chipset. The ICH9DH supplies 4 lanes for peripheral use. The 32 lanes from the northbridge are split 4x (PCI-E x8 lanes)



			
				Wikipedia said:
			
		

> Intel Codename SkullTrail is an enthusiast gaming platform. SkullTrail is a dual CPU system. The demonstration unit is reported to have NVIDIA SLI support, and it is now known that it will support NVIDIA SLI and ATI Crossfire. Skulltrail was demonstrated, and the board includes 2 nForce200 SLI components.
> 
> Intel demonstrated SkullTrail at Intel Developer Forum Fall 2007 in San Francisco, USA.
> 
> ...



Doesn't it say "it was demonstrated with two 45 nm High-K processor Yorkfield running at 3.2 GHz"? Yorkfield is a LGA 775 processor incompatible with LGA 771 boards.


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Nope, Skulltrail is a socket 775 board, designed to take in current gen Penryn processors. The board uses 32 lanes from the X48 northbridge, 16 lanes split to x8, x8 when doing SLI using the nForce 100 chipset. The ICH9DH supplies 4 lanes for peripheral use. The 32 lanes from the northbridge are split 4x (PCI-E x8 lanes)



CPUz shot of the skulltrail
http://www.hothardware.com/image_popup.aspx?image=big_skulltrail_5.jpg&articleid=1030&t=a

Article the screen shot came from
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel_Skulltrail_and_Penryn_Performance_Preview/

Not all x48's are skulltrails, thats just a special x48 with the nvidia chip on it


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## btarunr (Jan 17, 2008)

asb2106 said:


> CPUz shot of the skulltrail
> http://www.hothardware.com/image_popup.aspx?image=big_skulltrail_5.jpg&articleid=1030&t=a
> 
> Article the screen shot came from
> ...



You don't get it. Harpertown can run on a Skulltrail but an LGA 775 processor like Yorkfield cannot run on a LGA 771 platform. Re-read my previous post. Made additions.


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

btarunr said:


> You don't get it. Harpertown can run on a Skulltrail but an LGA 775 processor like Yorkfield cannot run on a LGA 771 platform. Re-read my previous post. Made additions.



Ok, but is all x48 chipsets gonna fall under the skulltrail platform?


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## ktr (Jan 17, 2008)

Skulltrail is 771: http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?49680


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## HaZe303 (Jan 17, 2008)

ktr said:


> Skulltrail is 771: http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?49680



Yes, skulltrail is 771. Not 775. Just because it uses a 45nm processor doesnt mean its 775.


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## asb2106 (Jan 17, 2008)

HaZe303 said:


> Yes, skulltrail is 771. Not 775. Just because it uses a 45nm processor doesnt mean its 775.



Thanks, I thought I was reading that right


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## ktr (Jan 17, 2008)

771 and 775 are more or less the same, just as 939 and 940.


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## btarunr (Jan 18, 2008)

HaZe303 said:


> Yes, skulltrail is 771. Not 775. Just because it uses a 45nm processor doesnt mean its 775.



Then how could they test it successfully on a Yorkfield??


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## ktr (Jan 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Then how could they test it successfully on a Yorkfield??



QX9775's = socket 771
QX9650's and QX9770's = socket 775


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## asb2106 (Jan 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> You don't get it. Harpertown can run on a Skulltrail but an LGA 775 processor like Yorkfield cannot run on a LGA 771 platform. Re-read my previous post. Made additions.



Do me a favor next time and just take it easy

Its always possbible to read something wrong


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## Tatty_One (Jan 18, 2008)

SK-1 said:


> The difference is +10



+10 what......+10 jobs top afford one?


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## Tatty_One (Jan 18, 2008)

Hawk1 said:


> Native 1600FSB support vs 1333 on the x38s. Also hear they use better parts so "supposed" to OC better, but that could just be marketing speak.



Actually the x38 has native 1600fsb support also, it's plastered in huge writing all over the box of my board.  Also the 2 previews I read, one from the tech report and one from Xtreme systems suggested that they perhaps would not overclock better (the mainstreme X48 boards that is, in fact worse, but the top end enthusiast boards may overclock better).


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## Tatty_One (Jan 18, 2008)

ktr said:


> I love how MSI does their heatpipes, its all shiny and crazy. Not like asus, who makes it dull and boring.



A bit like this?


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## Tatty_One (Jan 18, 2008)

ktr said:


> QX9775's = socket 771
> QX9650's and QX9770's = socket 775



Yup!


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## ktr (Jan 18, 2008)

Tatty_One said:


> A bit like this?



Thats nice and shiny!


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## asb2106 (Jan 18, 2008)

Tatty_One said:


> A bit like this?



thats the dq6 right, I did like that board because it had 8 onboard SATA ports


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## btarunr (Jan 18, 2008)

The heatpipes on almost every ASUS ROG board is equally good/better.


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## ktr (Jan 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> The heatpipes on almost every ASUS ROG board is equally good/better.



I bet they work great, but to me, they look a tad dull and boring.


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## btarunr (Jan 18, 2008)

ktr said:


> I bet they work great, but to me, they look a tad dull and boring.



Not even the ones with fusion-blocks? I find them sexy. The ones on the Maximus Extreme look awesome, better than the Maximus Formula SE.


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## ktr (Jan 18, 2008)

I prefer msi's hydrogen. I love that brushed copper look.


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## btarunr (Jan 18, 2008)

Better than this? The ASUS Rampage Extreme (also Maximus Extreme):


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## freaksavior (Jan 18, 2008)

^ ddr3 though?

@ ktr its ddr3 though right?


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## ktr (Jan 18, 2008)

With the asus, you are stuck with 3/8 barbs, while the msi...you can use any fittings. As for ddr 2/3, i am not sure...some peeps say its a x38 (as it says on the board), some say its a x48 (because thats and old pic). Chances are its gonna be ddr3 if x48.


edit: its seems that the x38 is also ddr3.


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## freaksavior (Jan 18, 2008)

any ideas how much the higher end x48's will be (ddr2)?

maybe around $250-$300?

i just found this 



> The DDR2 version named Rampage Formula while the DDR3 version called Rampage Extreme.


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## Tatty_One (Jan 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> The heatpipes on almost every ASUS ROG board is equally good/better.[/QUOTE
> 
> 
> I doubt that "almost every" Asus is "as good OR better" than the top of the range Giggy board.....now maybe their top of the range or similar or even the odd other


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## btarunr (Jan 18, 2008)

Tatty_One said:


> I doubt that "almost every" Asus is "as good OR better" than the top of the range Giggy board.....now maybe their top of the range or similar or even the odd other



I was talking in terms of component cooling design (heatsinks/pipes, etc.) Otherwise they suck. I'm a fellow-Giggy user


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## asb2106 (Jan 18, 2008)

So does anyone have any ideas on when we will see these boards go retail??


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## asb2106 (Jan 18, 2008)

and with the x48 chipset close to release would I be better off waiting for them to arrive, either for a cheaper x38 or for the added benifits of the x48 chipset?

My only needs are q6600 support(with good OC ability), DDR2, xfire support(2 maybe 3 16x PCIe) and alteast 2 available PCI slots for my add-in cards(RAID).


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## Ketxxx (Jan 18, 2008)

Eh.... makes more sence to have a DDR2 and DDR3 version, not a combo. Combo would do well on a budget board thats likely to be shoved in a office PC, though.


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## asb2106 (Jan 18, 2008)

Ketxxx said:


> Eh.... makes more sence to have a DDR2 and DDR3 version, not a combo. Combo would do well on a budget board thats likely to be shoved in a office PC, though.



??? was that in response to my question


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## Ketxxx (Jan 18, 2008)

No, to the original post


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## asb2106 (Jan 18, 2008)

Ketxxx said:


> No, to the original post



ooohh sorry


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