Intel Finalizes Spec Sheet series for H97 - Z97 and X99 Chipsets

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/28/2014 10:51 AM | source: | 6 comment(s)

Two interesting slides from Intel leaked today through TPU with the source being Hermitage Akihabara, the slides give the final specs and features of the upcoming Series 9 chipsets. Though there are no big surprises is does show all the features. The Intel series 9 chipsets will see two important chipsets for us Guru's, obviously the Z97 and later on Z99 chipset. Z97 will be split up into two SKUs, the Z97 Express, and the H97 Express chipset.

The Z97 and H97 Chipset

That makes Z97 the more high-end platform for current and upcoming Haswell based processors, including "Devil's Canyon" processors which have an improved heatspreader/TIM and are overclockable being unlocked. These two chipset will get three PCI-Express 3.0 slots connected towards the CPU, in configurations of x16/NC/NC (NC=No Card), x8/x8/NC, and x8/x4/x4. Z97 will support overclocking, H97 Express won't.

If we look a bit closer at the slides you will notice that Z97 and H97 will get legacy support for PCI-Express M.2 storage which is lovely, as PCI-Express M.2 has roughly 67% more bandwidth available opposed to SATA3 (6 Gbps). So that will definitely kick off a new SSD race in the upcoming months.

Obviously there will also be support for SATA 6 Gb/s ports, six of them with AHCI and RAID support. Rapid Storage Technology (RST) and Smart Response Technology (SRT). Z97 seems to feature something new called Dynamic Storage Accelerator (DST), likely a caching feature.

The X99 Express Chipset

We have already written a lot about Haswell-E and X99, this is going to be the stuff us enthusiast will run warm for.

X99 is developed for the 6 and 8-core DDR4 supporting Haswell-E" HEDT platform and is based on socket LGA2011-3 (this one is incompatible with the current LGA2011 btw). The motherboards based on X99 can support a whopping five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 which can be arranged in these slot configurations, x16/NC/x16/NC/x8, or x16/NC/x8/x8/x8 and yeah, even x8/x8/x8/x8/x8. A 4-way multi-GPU setup suddenly became very sexy.

X99 will bring a whopping 10-port SATA 6 Gb/s storage controller supporting RAID RST and SRT and SSD TRIM on RAID 0 configurations. Intel plans to launch the three around Q2-Q3, 2014.

Kudo's to TPU and Hermitage Akirahaba for picking up on this story.

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geogan
Senior Member

Posts: 1175
Joined: 2010-01-04

#4791992 Posted on: 03/31/2014 05:42 PM

PCI-e configuration I want from top to bottom:
x1
x16
--- whatever, I won't use this
x16
---whatever, I won't use this
x16

The PCI-e configuration on most boards is usually really retarded. Please, somebody make a board with this configuration.

I want dual spaced x16 slots with additional slots that are actually useable. Is that so hard to do?

Yeah, really pisses me off that the board manufacturers don't put more space between PCI-E slots (to save space/money??). Why do they still build them with the assumption that people use graphics cards that occupy only 1 slot width???? Or that people on X99 type chipsets don't do anything other than use 1 PCI-E slot for graphics card and nothing else.

Really annoying that a normal decent modern high-end graphics card takes up two slots space and blocks the usable PCI/PCI-E slot underneath that I could have used for RAID/sound/other interface cards.

Regarding X99, like the sound of 10 x SATA6. Also glad I didn't upgrade from X58 to 2011 now (once again not backward with 2011!).

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