Given it's been made quite clear in recent times that Intel's upcoming Conroe processors offer blitzing (and in several cases, unbeatable) performance, it's not hard to predict that its going to be the platform of choice for many many enthusiasts.

Both ATI & NVIDIA know this, and as such are aiming to deliver highly competitive motherboard chipsets based around this new platform. HKEPC have sourced some info from both giants on what we can expect in the coming months.

Without any doubt, the upcoming Conroe provides lots of performance improvement and is expected to be the favorite of high-end users. To advance in high-end market, instead of AMD based chipset, both ATi and nVidia are going to provide another Intel based chipset.

Lacking of SLi and CrossFire, Intel's high-end platform has no way to compete with AMD K8 effectively in a long time, so that there are just a few products for Intel from ATi and nVidia. Sources indicated that Intel is leaving the high-end chipset market and open it to ATi and nVidia. Actually, until 2007 Q2, Intel has no plan on the replacement of 975X and Conroe is the hope to change the situation.