The Ivy Bridge 22nm story gets even better. The new chip is socket LGA 1155 and it is socket compatible with the existing Sandy Bridge processors and Sugar Bay 2011 platform. Unfortunately we are quite sure that Cougar point PCH chipset of Sandy Bridge won’t support the new 22nm Ivy Bridge.

We are afraid that you will still need a new board. Even the Panther point PCH chipset is pin compatible with Cougar Point chipset of Sandy Bridge, but again this might help board manufactures to make boards faster, but end users will need to buy a new board.

 

The new platform officially supports USB 3.0 and its graphics can deal with DirectX 11. One additional news is that Maho Bay platform graphics now supports three independent displays, something that might come handy to a few, i.e. users in the financial business. Let's not forget the enhanced media performance as well as much better performance in both graphics and CPU area.

Sounds good, and the new platform comes roughly in a year's time, Q1 2012, most likely January 2012 if Intel doesn't hit any delays.