WHILE SOME makers of motherboards for Pentium 4 3.06GHz processors might have to tear up their designs and start from scratch, one leading maker of boards reckons that existing designs won't need much of a revamp.
It hopes.

The manufacturer, who declined to be named, has warned however that other makers may find that their power supplies and existing designs may fail to do the job when the 3.06GHz P4 is launched ? probably on the 25th of October next.

The maker told the INQ: "We feel confident that provided Intel doesn't do a pin out change in such a way as they have previously with PPGA-FCPGA-FCPGA2, the power circuitry of our entire three phase product will be suitable."

But if other manufacturers have not laid out their designs properly, he reckoned that there could be a huge surplus of Pentium 4 motherboards slurping around the channel.

The trickier question with the 3.06GHz Pentium 4 is the hypethreading that Intel will introduce with this CPU. But most of the OEMs, as we reported in August, have already received notice from the chip company on the changes on the chipset needed for this feature and already have validated designs. µ