Intel isn't due to launch its new enthusiast focused X97 platform until late this year. But from the motherboards we saw last week we now have a pretty good handle on the features in this beastly new chipset.
During Computex last week we had a chance to check out a few different manufacturers’ X79 motherboards. At the moment these exist largely as engineering samples, with a much more rudimentary featureset than we expect to see when Intel’s X58 chipset replacement launches late this year. We don’t have spec sheets or details beyond the leaked Intel roadmaps of a couple months ago, but having a close look at the boards lets us confirm and clarify some of the features that we will be seeing in X79.
The first is socket 2011. We knew it was coming but hadn’t realized just how massive it would be. We assume the large socket size is there for two main reasons – to facilitate the quad channel memory controller and the rumoured-to-be massive L3 cache on the Sandy Bridge-E processors. What it does mean is that the socket has two latching levers in order to ensure that the chip contacts all the pins in the socket securely.
Look closely at the socket and a second thing becomes apparent – heatsinks now bolt through/into the socket itself. The four holes on the socket are all threaded, which indicates that the days of separate backplates are behind us. As a downside this rigid mounting design and the big jump in contact area is that we’ll expect new heatsinks to be required for the new socket.
The other most noticeable thing is the way that the quad channel DDR slots flank the socket. This is likely due to the fact that the tracers between system memory and the CPU’s memory controllers need to be equal. Putting four banks of DDR on one side of the socket would be a PCB design nightmare, hence the arrangement we now see. It was mentioned a few times that the boards that end up shipping with X79 will likely have more than four slots, but for now these early samples are all one stick of RAM per channel.
Shifting our attention to the PCI-Express slots we can see a massive jump in the amount of available lanes. Sandy Bridge-E will support the PCI-Express 3.0 specification, and from looking at the slots on both the Gigabyte and MSI boards we can see that there are 40 lanes of PCI-E 3.0 goodness available. On both the boards this takes the form of two x16 slots and a x8 one – one can envisage a x16 and 3 x 8 config for quad SLI and Crossfire but we don’t expect to see these on the more mainstream boards.
Native support for this much PCI-Express makes motherboard manufacturers happy, as it gives them back board real estate currently used to mount nf200 or Lucid Hydra controllers to deliver the PCI-Express lanes needed for the more extreme Crossfire and SLI configs.
The X79 PCH (platform controller hub) sits near the base of the boards and is clearly a step beyond the Z68. If we look at Gigabyte’s board we see that there is the familiar SATA configuration of two 6Gbps ports and four 3Gbps ones. However next to these sit a host of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) ports. This fits with Intel roadmap leaks that indicate the X79 will support up to 10 SATA 6Gbps ports that can optionally be configured to support SAS.
From MSI’s spec sheet we know that the X79 will support Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology (RST) and we can pretty much assume that it will also support Smart Response SSD caching. While this is complete speculation we wouldn’t be surprised if Smart Response is limited to the first two SATA 6Gbps channels, with Intel reusing the basic design of the Z68 SATA controller and adding an extra 6Gbps secondary controller to it rather than redesigning their entire controller.
What is clear is that Intel hasn’t bothered integrating USB 3 into X79. Look at the backplanes of these boards and it is clear that the native solution is USB 2 and USB 3 is still being delivered by third party controller chips (most manufacturers have switched from NEC to Etron chips). The good news is that front panel headers for USB 3 are now pretty much standard, and case manufacturers are incorporating this into their designs.
We are sure that more details will slip out as the X79 launch approaches, and please keep in mind that these features are all informed speculation based upon the limited information out there combined with the features seen on these motherboards. What is clear is that the X79 looks like it will be a worthy successor to, and a big step forward from, the now long-on-the-tooth X58.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012