Intel Z390 chipset to replace Z370 with Z370 going end-of-life
We've talked and discussed everything and anything Z390 over the past few months now. Basically, the two chipsets are really similar but would bring support for 8-core Coffee lake processors. Word out now however is that Intel might be simply replacing Z270 with Z390.
Initially, we all expected Z390 to exists next to Z370 and if we can believe a few newly leaked roadmaps, Intel is planning to phase out the Z370 chipset this quarter with Z390. Earlier on, we already posted a news item pretty much indicating this new rumor, The Z370 to get rebranded as Z390. Of course, take the news with a grain of salt.
But in essence, the Z390 chipset would remain the same as the Z370 chipset, manufacturers who want to offer the support that the chipset originally promised, will have to revert and do this in a more traditional way: with external controllers such as those from Asmedia, reported benchlife.
Z390 has been discussed a lot, it should be a chipset intended for 8-core Coffee Lake CPUs, but these are not expected to launch anytime soon. Z390 will get an LGA1151 socket using the traditional DMI 3.0 chipset-bus (which basically is an x4 PCIe link lane up/downlink. Similar to the Z370 chipset, it'll have 24 PCI-Express gen 3.0 lanes. Also similar is storage at six SATA 6 Gbps ports with AHCI and RAID support; and up to three 32 Gbps M.2/U.2 connectors. LAN remains the same as well. 1 GbE, Intel recommends their Wireless-AC 9560 card for the motherboard manufacturers to pair this chipset with for 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.
Look and compare below, the two official chipset block diagrams.
Above Intel Z390 as leaked earlier at Intel
Above (for comparison) Z370 - the differences really one are USB 3.1 gen2 and Intel Wireless-AC (CNVi)
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Senior Member
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As a former Intel fanboy, I'm willing to admit the fact that Intel are once again making things worse for themselves, by ruining what little is left of their reputation.
I don't want to change my motherboard every year to change CPU, just because their greedy shareholders think it's a good idea and I'll be happy to jump on the AMD bandwagon eventually.
Only thing holding me back from a purchase is the low core speeds (or "ipc") but from what I've read Ryzen 2 should give me that much needed performance increase over Ryzen+.
Now I may not be as forgiving or favorable when it comes to AMD graphics cards (vs. Nvidia) but that's another topic in and of itself and people will flag my comment as "troll" as soon as I bring it up.
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Classic Intel... Platforms with less than a year lifetime.. congrats.. AMD Ryzen is the way to go!
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I have no idea what that statement means. You do know if partners stop offering motherboards based on Z370 and shift to Z390 that your system doesn't somehow stop working, right? Intel releasing a new chipset doesn't mean someone comes and rips the Z370 out of your system thus ending its life. It will continue on working happily for years. If you mean there is something newer that is maybe slightly more capable or even equally capable around then it is like just about every piece of technology around. New TVs, cars, coffee makers, washers, phones, etc appear all the time. There wouldn't be many companies left if they only released a new product every 3 or 4 years.
Also @Hilbert, the title infers Z390 will replace Z370 then it says Z270 in the first paragraph.
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And still PCI-E 3.0? Looks like my little 370 still has nothing to fear.
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I have the impression, that most of the people are still highly unwilling to learn...
As long as 'Intel' is written on top of the box - they go and buy... no matter how often the sockets will be changed, no matter how little the ipc-improvement is, no matter how quickly new parts are facing an early eol.
&No, I'm not an AMD-fanboy - the heart of my rig is a 5930k since 2014, but i was very sad, how quickly x99 was replaced by x299 (although it could be foreseen, when looking at x79)!
I'm very glad AMD pulled the trigger with their AM4- & TR4-lineup, otherwise the 'mainstream-enthusiast-segment' would still be using only quadcores... how sad.
And finally, what is still (half) a mystery to me: although people are more and more switching to resolutions like 1440p/4K, mindfactory sold twice as much i7-8700k (~7k) compared to the latest AMD-mainsteram-flagship (~3.5k), since R7-2700X appeard... how ridiculous (exept you're gaming in 720p
We'll see how many are running like thirsty cattle to the 'promised Land' (Z390+8 cores).
The only small light at the end of the tunnel gave me the sales numers of the i7-8086k (~0.25k) - maybe I'm starting to get/be wrong in my 'observations' (hopefully).
But we'll see - on AM4 Zen2 will offer up to 16 cores... (and 64 on TR4?) - maybe that will help;
@least should it put Intel on full brown alert, so that maybe again it'll pay of for us consumers.