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First pictures of Intel's Bloomfield motherboard

by on20 March 2008

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Reference board with odd layout


Chiphell scored the first pictures of Intel's reference board for the upcoming desktop version of the Nehalem processors, the Bloomfield and it looks rather different from what we've come to expect from Intel. It's quite clear that this is an early reference board and it's unlikely that the final product will look like this, but it still gives a good insight on how different the Nahalem platform is.

If you look at the pictures below that we spruced up a bit, since the originals from Chiphell are a bit dark, you'll notice that apart from the fact that this board has the usual array of components, it looks nothing like your average Intel board today. The four memory slots are located at the top of the board and we presume the three blue slots are for triple-channel memory. However, it's odd that there's a single black slot as well, and we're not sure what the intention of it is. We actually expected to see six memory slots, but this might well come on later boards.

The CPU socket is located below the memory slots, but oddly enough, behind the chipset. The socket is LGA1366 in this case and it has a lot more pins than what we're used to seeing on consumer level CPU sockets. The chipset location for both the replacement for the MCH and the ICH are located toward the front of the board, vertically above each other. This is something we haven't seen on any other motherboard to date and it looks rather strange.

The location of the 12V power connector is between the two chipsets which, again, is unusual, but at least the 24-pin ATX connector is located at the top of the board. The CPU seems to use a six-phase analog power regulation, but again, it looks quite different from what we're used to seeing. The memory seems to use a two phase power regulation and there's a Molex connector towards the back of the board which suggests that it's for extra power to the PCIe slots.

Speaking of slots, the board has a pair of x16 PCIe slots, but it also has an open ended x4 slot with a retention clip in the same location as on a x16 slot, suggesting that this board might work with three graphics cards. It also has two x1 PCIe slots an a single PCI slot. Other features we noticed were six SATA connectors, most likely eight rear USB 2.0 ports, what appears to be dual Gigabit Ethernet, as the board appears to have both an Intel and a Marvell network controller, a Realtek HD audio controller, eSATA, FireWire and a pair of debug LEDs.

We're curious about what "Joe's order the smackover special" means below the bottom PCIe x1 slot, although it could possibly be the board name for now. The skull and crossbones suggest that this is a continuation on the bonetrail/skulltrail series, but time will tell what the official name for the final board will be.

Have a look at the pictures below and you can also visit Chiphell's forum post here, although you have to register to see the pictures.

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Last modified on 20 March 2008
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