Introduction
It's been known for a while that today's new products from Intel were coming. But when the barrage of new products, based around a socket change for the Pentium 4 microprocessor, arrived at Casa Del Rys for evaluation, I struggled to see how I'd fit it all into this article ready for NDA expiry.You see it's a lot more than just a socket change. There's new chipsets to consider (three in the consumer space that HEXUS covers, a few more if you count the business sector that we traditionally ignore), the new CPUs that the chipsets power (six on this new socket, all available and announced today), PCI Express for both graphics and sundry peripherals, Intel's High Definition Audio spec, the new SATA controller on the all-new ICH6/R southbridge, DDR-II memory which Intel is pushing hard and a whole lot more, new socket definitely included.
So it's going to be quite a ride today if you're attempting to cover the new technology at as many sites as possible, to get your head around it all. I guarantee you I won't cover everything, time and logistics have seen to that, but we'll get through the main things without much issue.
Anyway, let's crack on and get stuck into everything that's new, starting with the new socket.
