Any news on how many native SATA-3 ports Ivy Bridge E will feature?

[Crowned Clown]

Any news on how many native SATA-III (6.0 Gbit/s) ports will the new Ivy Bridge E will feature? I think it's just about time to remove/phaseout those SATA 2 ports and I was hoping they'd replace em' all with SATA 3. Who doesn't want a 4X-6X SSD in RAID-0 with TRIM. (2000-3000 MB/s)

 

[radrok]

We'll have to see if they change chipset from X79 to something different, the socket is supposed to remain 2011.

I guess Ivy-E will just be a drop in replacement for LGA 2011 like Gulftown 32nm was for socket 1366, same chipset.

My guess is we'll be stuck with only 2 sata3 ports.

Just get an highpoint rocketRAID like I did.

 

[Aquinus]

I guess Ivy-E will just be a drop in replacement for LGA 2011 like Gulftown 32nm was for socket 1366, same chipset.

+1: Pretty sure this is what Intel is planning to do.

Who doesn't want a 4X-6X SSD in RAID-0 with TRIM. (2000-3000 MB/s)

Hehe. As much as I enjoy my two SSDs in RAID-0, the extra bandwidth isn't going to get you a whole lot because even at 1GB/s other things start to bottleneck. So all in all, I don't think this is necessary. Add some redundancy though (aka, no RAID-0), SSDs can fail too and the more you add the more likely one of them will fail. Also at this point it could be cheaper to get a revo drive. You're also assuming whatever raid controller you get can handle doing 3-4GB/s, that's a steep task for many hardware RAID controllers IMHO. Just because the controller has the ports doesn't mean it can push them all at 100% without losing performance.

 

[Feänor]

There's an article on tom'shardware saying (take this as it is: a logical deduction. No hardproof whatsoever) that lga 2011 is going to be replaced and ivy-e just skipped. Haswell is coming late this spring, and haswell-e could be released by the end of the year, so no big surprise why it could be skipped. The new socket would come because haswell have more things (usb among others) included in the cpu die, so new chipset (X99) needed.

http://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/haswell-E-X99,1-37098.html

It is in french, sorry for everyone that can't understand it!

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Short answer: no.


Long answer: Intel is still officially saying that IB-e will be on the same socket. Given its scheduled release, the IB-e processors will be competing with Haswell. Haswell is supposed to be the mainstream option, and far more resources are going towards it. All of this leads to the conclusion that IB-e will not get a new PCH.

This said, remember what was promised internally of X79 (you can dig up the slides from this website). There were supposed to be more SATA ports (Intel officially only supported 6), more USB 3.0 ports, and that SATA was supposedly focused more on III than II. Some boards even opened up the locked off SATA, but they were murderously expensive.

I'd be happy with X79, assuming it was that. If they could drop down to the 45 or 32 nm process, decrease the heat output, and actually deliver on that I'd be happy. As it stands, the 65 nm process is just incapable of delivering the performance needed.

All of this hinges on Intel giving a damn about the high end processors. They've shown time and again that it isn't their priority. With AMD functionally out of the market, we may never see another value driven high end processor. I hope this is incorrect, but X79 is likely the end of the line for IB-e.

 

[btarunr]

Word is, X79 will remain the core logic for IvB-E, so 2x SATA 6 Gb/s + 4x SATA 3 Gb/s.

 

[Aquinus]

Word is, X79 will remain the core logic for IvB-E, so 2x SATA 6 Gb/s + 4x SATA 3 Gb/s.

It's not like this is really a bad thing though. The only reason to need SATA 6Gb is if you have SSDs that support it. Otherwise it doesn't really matter. A regular hard drive won't need the bandwidth it offers. Maybe other people would consider getting more than 2 SSDs but I don't see myself doing that. I've been more than happy with skt2011 and X79. Despite it not having more features I think it's still a capable platform nonetheless.

 

[Crowned Clown]

Just get an highpoint rocketRAID like I did.

Didn't know that, does it support TRIM in RAID array?

What my point here is; isn't it just about time they phaseout those SATA 2 already? EOL (End of Life). Just like SATA 1 is history.

 

[jagd]

Thanks for info but this is sad , AMD has 6 sata3 for nearly 2 years with SB 950 and intel still limiting spec .

Word is, X79 will remain the core logic for IvB-E, so 2x SATA 6 Gb/s + 4x SATA 3 Gb/s.

 

[Aquinus]

What my point here is; isn't it just about time they phaseout those SATA 2 already? EOL (End of Life). Just like SATA 1 is history.

Because the only place where SATA 6Gb is going to be useful is with solid state drives and most people generally aren't going to have more than one or two of them. SATA 3Gb is more than enough for rotation media hard drives. Also consider that X79 (like all other 7 and 6 series board,) uses DMI for chipset communication (I think X79 might also route 8 PCI-E lanes to the chipset, but don't take my word on that,) so the amount of bandwidth that is there might be a little tight if you start pushing that many SATA 6G devices plus all the other devices on of tied off of the PCH which includes gigabit ethernet (maybe dual lan,) as well as USB 3.0 and any eSATA controllers that may exist. It's not like the chipset is sitting there doing nothing.

AMD also is in a different position than Intel. AMD does not have PCI-E directly off the CPU like Intel does (with the exception of APUs,) where the PCI-E lanes are on the north bridge and all PCI-E traffic plus SATA traffic and everything else goes through HyperThansport which has vastly more bandwidth than DMI does (considering it has to handle 24 PCI-E lanes plus everything on the motherboard for a 790FX, 890FX, or 990FX.)

So all in all, AMD is in a position to easily implement it and have plenty of bandwidth to satisfy it and Intel very well might not. The real question you have to ask yourself is, how much of a difference does this really make? I suspect Intel asked themselves the same question and figured two ports was enough at the time. X79 has been out for a while now, it's not like it's a new chipset either. Also when your have 40 PCI-E lanes, I think you can find some room to add a good RAID card.