X48 changes absolutely nothing over X38 other than a so called "official" support for 1600FSB CPU's:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...ts/showdoc.aspx?i=3150
And X48 will cost more upon release than X38 will when X48 comes out. In a month or so when X48 comes out some X38 boards will receive a small price reduction according to my local store owner, by a range of 5% to 15%. And the first X38 boards were released in September at quite a high price, but are already found today at a reduced price from their release day's MSRP. I paid my GA-X38-DQ6 ?215, which is the equivalent of about $320, including taxes. But back in September the store owner told me it was priced at ?235 (still including taxes).
So the X38 boards are getting a little cheaper already, and each X38 Mobo manufacturers are releasing new BIOS revisions which helps fixing issues (if any) and make the chipset a worthy acquisition. Yes of course I am trying to not only defend my purchase, but also to just make people understand that, according to the facts, X48 is an almost direct replica of X38 with only official 1600FSB CPU support. That means that X38 might have problems with such CPU's, even if it says written in big shiny letters on the retail box of my Mobo "Supports 1600FSB CPU's".
So if you want to wait for the X48 and pay more for a feature that you might not even need (most of the CPU's now and even the 45nm ones in January are and still will be 1333FSB ones) go ahead and wait, it's your choice. But my recommendation is that if you want to upgrade now why wait when the parts you'll be getting now will do about 99% of the job that the "next one" will do ? And Nehalem will be the "next big" thing yes, but not the last one either ...
You could wait 12 months for Nehalem, and then what ... you will see people saying "dude don't wait for Nehalem, there's a new architecture/revision/whatnot coming out in just four or five months !". It never ends if you keep waiting. I say go for it and buy yourself a X38 motherboard especially if you KNOW that any of the CPU's that interest you are 1333FSB CPU's anyway (if you want to avoid any potential problems that we don't even know will occur with the X38, it still has to be proven without doubts that it ISN'T entirely compatible with 1600FSB CPU's).
Personally, as I said, I am using a GA-X38-DQ6 right now (from Gigabyte of course) and I just think it's an amazing board. I can't OC right now because I'm using a pair of Memory and a CPU from a friend (Kingston PC2-800 and E6600) and I don't want to OC stuff that isn't mine. I have those parts temporarily because I am waiting for the Wolfdales and Yorkfields to come out next month or in February.
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