With the initial launch of the LGA 775 platforms and processors, there was a real lull in how fast the enthusiast crowd picked them up. At time of launch, there were few solid PCI-Express options, and those that were available were quite costly. There was a substantial amount of DDR-II that soon became available, and the prices seen were quite nice, though that wasn’t expected to last and it’s already making a rebound. Another problem was lack of any third arty cooling solutions. Basically, either you found an LGA 775 capable water block, or you were stuck with Intel’s standard cooler, which isn’t exactly a slouch, or something worse. As time has progressed, and more platforms and capable components have reached the market, the LGA 775 platforms have begun to garner more interest among upgrading Intel enthusiasts.

     Another problem many had with the actually i925X and i915P/G platforms were their expensive premium. As we saw when these two platforms were launched, there’s only a minute difference in overall performance between the two. It certainly wasn’t enough to justify the extra costs for upgrading. As cheaper and better boards have hit the market, this too has helped business pick up for i925X and 915P/G motherboards. So, although things were slow at first as I expected, they’re beginning to pick up, and should really start to pick up when PCI-E graphics solutions become more the norm for upgrades over the several months to a year as AMD chipsets debut featuring support for PCI-E.

     Today, we see the launch of Intel’s latest incarnation of i925X, the i925XE chipset. Now, as much as anyone would like to tell you, whether it be through marketing or salesmanship, i925XE is nothing more than a glorified i925X with added support for 1066MHz FSB Pentium 4’s, the first of which is also being launched today and you’ll see in action soon. The initial i925X chipset had a built in overclocking lock by our friends at Intel that made 1066MHz a nearly impossible feat even with motherboard manufacturers finding ways to circumvent the problem. Obviously, both these boards and processors will carry a heavy premium, but the real question is, as always, is it worth the extra cash? Well, before we try to answer this question for our adoring public, I’ll be re-hashing the info on the i925X and now i925XE chipsets, as well as covering the thermal specs for the 3.46GHz Extreme Edition CPU. If you already know all of these details, skip ahead to the benchmarks to find what you’re looking for.