The north bridge serves up 16 PCIe lanes that can routed to a single x16 slot or split evenly between a pair of x8s for CrossFire. On the connectivity front, the P45 trickles PCI Express 2.0 down to the mid-range. As they often do, though, motherboard makers are already offering BIOS options that allow for faster memory bus speeds. Support for DDR2 memory officially tops out at 800MHz, with DDR3 only endorsed up to 1066MHz. Intel says the P45’s memory controller was redesigned to better take advantage of the additional bandwidth provided by 1333MHz front-side bus speeds. A dual-channel memory controller that supports DDR2 and DDR3 memory also makes an appearance, but this isn’t the same memory controller we saw in the P35. The chip supports front-side bus speeds up to 1333MHz, all but confirming that Intel has no plans to bump its mid-range Core 2 processors up to a faster FSB this year. In many ways, the P45 north bridge is quite similar to the P35 that preceded it. We’ll start with the P45, since it’s familiar territory, and ground on which enthusiasts are most likely to tread. We’ve already taken an early first look at a couple of P45 motherboards from Asus, but now the chipset is, um, official. Today Intel is officially unveiling its P45 and G45 Express chipsets.
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