We're also hearing that Intel is worried about AMD's FX processor refresh which should take place early next year, maybe not in terms of raw performance, but the company needs to have its platform out there to show that the company has yet another high-end platform ready to go. Make what you want of this, but to manage to meet the November deadline, Intel has cut further features from its X79 chipset.
If you remember the article from a couple of weeks ago which had the same diagram as the one above, we told you that Intel had gone from the server level Patsburg-D to the Patsburg-B level chipset for the X79. Well, now we're talking Patsburg-A, i.e. no SAS support at all. In other words, we're looking at a chipset very similar to Intel's current P67 chipset, as it will only sport two SATA 6Gbps ports and four SATA 3Gbps. This is starting to make it look less and less like that Intel will simply be able to "enable" these features by a software upgrade in the future and instead we can either look forward to a chipset revision or a new, more expensive chipset for the Waimea Bay platform.
And it doesn't stop there, we have more bad news with regards to the X79 chipset, but that's another story…