It is already know that Intel will be launching their Sandy Bridge processors early next year, but those that you’ll find in stores will only be Socket 1155 processors. Sandy Bridge E processors and the Intel X68 chipset architecture will only hit stores at the end of 2011, or even early 2012.

According to Nordic Hardware, vendors will only get sample chip of the high end segment next week to begin their research and development phase for motherboards based on this new architecture. Intel X68 and Sandy Bridge E has a planned launched date in Q4 2011, which means that the current enthusiast platform, LGA 1366 and the X58 chipset has more than a year to left to live.

We have received information that several major motherboard manufacturers will actually launch a new wave of Intel X58 motherboards with new features such as USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps during this ‘extended’ period. LGA 1366 users will be pleased to hear this, as their ‘investment’ will have an additional one year’s life span. This is rather unaccounted for, as it is Intel’s culture to launch the high end products first when they introduce new architecture, and we all know that Intel updates their lineup rather often. Thus, this X58 platform which was officially launched in 2008 will have three years’ lifespan.

Intel X68 is a part of Intel’s new Patsburg platform where the LGA 2011 socket will be used to hold Sandy Bridge E processors, which in turn houses a quad-channel DDR3 memory controller but has no embedded graphics technology (expected, as enthusiasts who bought such high-end parts would most probably want a dedicated solution instead). The processors support 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes and are geared toward enthusiasts and workstations with demands for extreme performance.

SOURCE via Nordic Hardware