Intel's AL460GX chipset may not match the power of AMD's Irongate D4 chipset, which will appear in motherboards in late Q1, next year. Last week, Intel unveiled the Merced chipset at its Developer Forum in Palm Springs, but no details were given on whether its claim of 4.2Gb/s throughput on dual memory buses was for the total throughput, or referred to each bus, giving a total of 8.4GB/s. Sources close to AMD's plans say that if the first case is true, then Intel's expensive chipset is "no better" than the Irongate D4 chipset announced at the Hot Chips conference last month. Irongate D4 has dual 64-bit DDR SDRAM buses running at 266MHz each, giving a total throughput of two by 2.1Gb/s -- 4.2Gb/s. The mainboards will be priced at around $1,000 and include dual 64-bit 66MHz PCI and AGP 4X. ® For full coverage of Merced and the rest of the Intel Developer Forum, go here.