Daft question of the month time.
If there's no north bridge, are the duties it would normally do loaded onto the south bridge or the CPU? Whichever way it is, isn't this likely to blunt the performance compared to the traditional NB/SB setup where each bridge could be doing things independently of each other, especially if its been shifted into the CPU? Or have they combined the bridges into a single 'super bridge' chip that is as powerful as the traditional NB/SB setup? Finally, if the bridges are combined does this limit what can be done with the board in terms of additional hardware? For example, will it still be possible to produce budget board with minimal features (a couple of SATA ports, single PCIex1 slot etc) and fully loaded top end board (dual PCIe, lots of SATA with dual RAID capabilities, silly numbers of USB ports etc), or are we stuck with limited configurations?
I'm only curios really, just wondering if the possible lack of flexibility is a sign that Intel are aiming the Core i5 at the domestic/office end of the market where you get waht you're given with a minimal ability to customise the configuration leaving the Core i7 as the only viable option for those with specialist requirements. Like I said, daft questions of the month time.
