Intel X79 Express Chipset Details Leaked

This enthusiast level chipset will come with a new 2011-pin socket and quad channel memory

 A source from it.com.cn managed to get his hands on a slide from Intel which outlines more details about its upcoming enthusiast level chipset now known as X79. This is a successor to the existing LGA1366 X58 chipset and is said to arrive in the fourth quarter of 2011; so expect actual retail samples to hit stores in early 2012.

The X79 chipset will consist of a 2011-pin LGA socket and will seat the Sandy Bridge-E series CPUs that will feature a quad-channel memory controller and a 32+ lane PCI-Express hub. Intel has decided to skip the X68 naming scheme altogether and has instead chosen a rather odd naming convention. Looking at the specification list, there are plenty of USB ports and support for SATA 6Gb/s as well but surprisingly, there is no mention about native USB 3.0 support which is quite odd. You would think a high-end platform would have these features by default. Expect to see early numbers being leaked around the end of the fourth quarter time frame.