Intel Nehalem motherboard gets showing

First pictures of Intel's codenamed 45nm Bloomfield high-end desktop processor based motherboard recently appeared online.

It is an Intel Desktop Board brand motherboard which is quite different to anything else we have seen in the past. It is a very early sample so the design and layout will probably change throughout the year until the first Nehalem processors are due to launch sometime in the Q4 timeframe.

The memory slots for one are right at the top of the board above the new LGA1366 socket. There are three blue colored 1600MHz DDR3 slots which are probably designed to easier identify support for triple channel memory. There are two PCI Express x16 slots for dual graphics along with a single x4 slot and two x1 slots. Legacy support for PCI is still included with a single slot - when will it ever die?

Onboard there appears to be six SATA II ports but there is probably also two (or more) eSATA ports on the I/O panel which we cannot see - they are probably powered by the ICHR10 Southbridge, we would guess.

That is about all we can tell you at the moment.