The X48 chipset has been released finally along with the QX9770 CPU with the FSB 1600MHz speed. The chipset has many motherboards based upon it from different manufacturers including Intel, Gigabyte, ASUS and others. The X48 is the high-end of the Intel motherboard chipset market with the P45 and G45 being the mainstream motherboards. The value segment will shortly be served by the P43 chipset. Today, Intel has more motherboards on the market than any other chipset vendor and the highest amount of CPU share as well. They recently announced that they had over 9.5 Billion USD in sales last quarter.
Gigabyte is a Taiwanese Tier-1 motherboard manufacturer that manufactures motherboards based upon virtually every chipset Intel makes. This is referenced by the fact that Gigabyte has several X48 chipsets, several P45 chipsets and will likely have different models for the other 4 series motherboard chipsets as they are available. Recently, Doc reviewed the X48-DQ6 motherboard based upon the X48 chipset from Intel. Today the board I’m reviewing is the X48T-DQ6 motherboard based upon the same chipset but differing from the other board by having support for DDR3 memory instead of DDR2 memory.
