Intel is one of the stalwarts of the computer industry. It is the largest CPU and chipset manufacturer in the world today, with revenues of over 35.5 billion in 2006 and over 50% of the worldwide chipset market for motherboards and CPUs. Intel CPUs have been in my primary gaming computer for years until the advent of the AMD Athlon 64 CPUs which had the best performance/price ratio on the market until the release of the Core 2 Duo series from Intel.
Intel motherboard chipsets dominate the market, as Intel combinations of CPU+motherboard can be offered for attractive pricing due to Intel manufacturing both. It's hard to compete against good bundling, witness AMD's recent merger with ATI last year. Intel introduced the LGA-775 platform in 2004 as a replacement for the Socket 478 platform.
Intel's first Socket LGA-775 motherboard chipsets were the 925X chipset for the high-end and the 915P for the mainstream. The introduction of the 955X chipset accompanied the release of the Dual Core CPUs. The release of Pressler saw the introduction of the 975X Express chipset. It is a testament to the features, performance and stability of the 975X platform that it is still Intel's flagship motherboard chipset. Today the board on the test bench is the Intel 975XBX2 Badaxe 2 board.
