Although Intel claims that i975X chipsets as well as the not yet announced i965 chipsets should all support Conroe processors, the mainboards based on the former one that are available in stores these days may be incompatible with the promising CPUs. As we have already told you earlier the problem lies with the new modified voltage regulator circuitry that the mainboard need (to meet the VRM11 requirements). Luckily, the mainboard vendors decided to get ready for the upcoming processors in advance, so some of them are already able to offer the users their Conroe-ready solutions.

The first one to acquire the desired Conroe compatibility appeared the D975XBX mainboard from Intel. It has been recently modified to support the upcoming Conroe: the corresponding mainboard revision is marked as 304 (D27094-304). You should remember though that neither 302 (D27094-302), nor 303 (D27094-303) mainboard revisions ensure compatibility with Conroe processors. The Intel D975XBX mainboard revision 304 started shipping on April 16, 2006.

The main differences made to the new revision of the Intel D975XBX mainboard are the following:

We will certainly learn more about a lot of other mainboards supporting Conroe processors in the near future. Such mainboard giants as ASUS and Gigabyte are still keeping silent about the Conroe support, although they are surely working on something exciting in their labs. However, despite this fact there is not so much hope left that the owners of i975X based mainboards will ever be able to acquire Conroe support with a simple BIOS update. Looks like hardware modification is inevitable.