Intel X38 launch pushed back again

We can confirm that the official Intel X38 chipset launch has been pushed back after having been brought forward. So everyone that's hoping for a launch on the 9/10th of September depending on where you live, you'll be disappointed to know that the launch has now been pushed back to the 23/24th of September, as it was initially intended.

But for those of you that desperately want an X38 board next week we've got some good news, apparently the motherboard manufacturers have already got stocks of the chipset and from what we've heard, some of them are intending to launch their boards on the 9/10th without Intel's blessing or official chipset launch.

This is very much akin with the P35 launch, as boards were available to purchase a good two to three weeks before the official launch at Computex in June this year. It seems strange that Intel allows this, but no-one is going to be sad if they can buy a board based on a new chipset before it has been officially announced.

X38 based boards won't be cheap though, most should cost well over US$200, although this will of course depend on the features. We've already shown you some sneak peeks of some of the upcoming boards and we've got more coming for you. It looks like the motherboard manufacturers are quite excited about the X38 chipset, but even more so the makers of DDR3 memory chips and modules, since it seems like everyone is more or less pulling DDR2 support from their X38 boards.

We'd expect to see some DDR2 boards appearing after the initial launch, but these are unlikely to perform as well, since it seems like the memory controller won't be handling DDR2 as well as it does DDR3. We can only hope that the cost of DDR3 modules will drop quickly, as that is one of the hurdles for anyone considering getting an X38 board.