Z77 are at newegg!

[dlf]

What are the main diferences in a (Z)77 motherboard compared to a (P)68?

 

[Aquinus]

I just saw the announcement for the EVGA Z77 FTW E-ATX Motherboard and wow, I am impressed. Personally I have always used Asus boards out of familiarity, but I know EVGA is one of the best GPU manufacturers and I would assume that their motherboards are of the same high standard of quality?
Because it is by far the most feature-rich, well layed out Z77 Board I have seen so far!
- 5x PCIE3.0 x16 slots (quad card support)
- 4/4 3Gbps/6Gbps SAT controlled by Chipset
- Actively cooled chipset
- E-ATX for factor means excellent card spacing
- support for up to DDR3-2600!

It is also extremely good looking, a cross between a ROG board and the SR-2... I am seriously considering this board for my build, just waiting for reviews...

Any thoughts?

I wouldn't want to divvy up 4 cards on PCI-E x4. Just go lga2011 for 3 way or more, because honestly, 20 pci-e lanes isn't enough and why in the world do you want to run so many cards on a mainstream cpu/mobo? I mean if you want to do it, feel free, but it sounds like a bad plan to me.

 

[nleksan]

My understanding is that it uses a bridge chip to allow x16/x16/x8/x8 at 3.0 speeds, which seems like plenty of speed to me..
However, even if the third card runs at x4, that would be no different than a PCIE2.0 at x8 which is pretty common in multiple card setups..

 

[Aquinus]

My understanding is that it uses a bridge chip to allow x16/x16/x8/x8 at 3.0 speeds, which seems like plenty of speed to me..
However, even if the third card runs at x4, that would be no different than a PCIE2.0 at x8 which is pretty common in multiple card setups..

I'm not understanding how you can get all this bandwidth from 20 PCI-E lanes. There is no extra bandwidth between the CPU and the motherboard, so where are all of these extra lanes coming from? x16 + x16 + x8 + x8 doesn't add up to 20 lanes. Does the bridge chip give you two 2.0 lanes for 1 3.0 lane or something because I feel like I'm missing something here.

 

[nleksan]

Honestly I don't understand it myself, which is why I am posting it here

However, once reviews hit, I guess we will see if it is merely a gimmick or not (shrug)

 

[Huddo93]

I've read that without a third party controller on the MB to give additional lanes, If you populate the correct PCIe 3.0 slots they will run at 8x (Gen2 16x), 8x (Gen2 16x) and 4x (Gen2 8x). Only if there is a third party controller giving additional lanes will there be more bandwidth.

Edit:
In saying this, that is more than enough bandwidth to run a 3way SLI/CF setup in my opinion, In my experience watching trusty LinusTechTips (Youtube), he has proven with last gen GTX5xx and HD69xx series cards that there is barely any performance decrease running cards using PCI Gen2 8x instead of PCI Gen2 16x. The test only showed a decrease once you started using Dual GPU cards, and in saying that I am unsure how the HD7970 and GTX680 would hold up considering there throughput is close to that of the dual GPU card

 

[Aquinus]

I've read that without a third party controller on the MB to give additional lanes, If you populate the correct PCIe 3.0 slots they will run at 8x (Gen2 16x), 8x (Gen2 16x) and 4x (Gen2 8x). Only if there is a third party controller giving additional lanes will there be more bandwidth.

Edit:
In saying this, that is more than enough bandwidth to run a 3way SLI/CF setup in my opinion, In my experience watching trusty LinusTechTips (Youtube), he has proven with last gen GTX5xx and HD69xx series cards that there is barely any performance decrease running cards using PCI Gen2 8x instead of PCI Gen2 16x. The test only showed a decrease once you started using Dual GPU cards, and in saying that I am unsure how the HD7970 and GTX680 would hold up considering there throughput is close to that of the dual GPU card

What I'm saying is even if the mobo has the extra lanes, where are they going? The CPU doesn't have any extra room for them and DMI isn't wide enough to drive that many not to mention other I/O ops would slow down. It doesn't make sense to me.

 

[illli]

waiting for the Asus P8Z77-I to be sold is aggravating me lol

 

[Cold Storm]

waiting for the Asus P8Z77-I to be sold is aggravating me lol

Where do you live? also which p8z77 are you looking at?

 

[illli]

america, and this one http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77I_DELUXE/

 

[cadaveca]

What I'm saying is even if the mobo has the extra lanes, where are they going? The CPU doesn't have any extra room for them and DMI isn't wide enough to drive that many not to mention other I/O ops would slow down. It doesn't make sense to me.

IT works fine, and is no different than using a bridge chip in Dual-VGA cards. The bridge chip also has a small buffer to cache commands that have not been sent yet, and yes, this couple potentially have an impact on performance. However, ebcuase these are PCie 3.0 parts, i do not see this as being too much of an issue, seeing how P67/Z68 boards already only offer x8 PCIe 2.0 links to dual installed VGAs. With the bridge, that'd use only half the available bandwidth.

 

[Cold Storm]

america, and this one http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77I_DELUXE/

ahhh, the itx... That's pure sex..

 

[illli]

yep. i want it badly lol

 

[Aquinus]

IT works fine, and is no different than using a bridge chip in Dual-VGA cards. The bridge chip also has a small buffer to cache commands that have not been sent yet, and yes, this couple potentially have an impact on performance. However, ebcuase these are PCie 3.0 parts, i do not see this as being too much of an issue, seeing how P67/Z68 boards already only offer x8 PCIe 2.0 links to dual installed VGAs. With the bridge, that'd use only half the available bandwidth.

Not true, the bridge in GPUs is simply an interconnect between the two GPUs using PCI-E. Both endpoints are GPUs. We're talking about one endpoint being a CPU which only has so many lanes. I can see using the 3.0 bandwidth to make more 2.0 lanes, but not running more full 3.0 lanes. It doesn't make sense because there isn't any extra bandwidth to be provided from the CPU. Also PCI-E sends a lot of data, that is one hell of a buffer (it would also add latency if that were the case.)

 

[nleksan]

Oh that Asus board looks nice!

 

[Aquinus]

america, and this one http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z77I_DELUXE/

That's a very sexy looking ITX board. It's like the P9X79 Deluxe had a child and that is what came out.

 

[illli]

yes indeed. however now i'm torn! i read earlier today that evga is making their own itx motherboard. http://www.evga.com/forums/fb.ashx?m=1544679 it sounds like it will be many months down the road however

 

[hat]

So what's the big deal about these boards? What makes them better than Z68? Did they figure out how to allow BCLK clocking or something?

 

[illli]

depends on which ones. in terms of itx, the z68 itx boards were horrible for overclocking. looks like some more effort was made for z77

 

[Aquinus]

Did they figure out how to allow BCLK clocking or something?

That is called SB-E.

 

[hat]

Right, but that's socket 2011. I was wondering if this new chipset could do the same for 1155.

 

[Aquinus]

Right, but that's socket 2011. I was wondering if this new chipset could do the same for 1155.

Sorry, only 1155 has a locked BCLK since Intel tied just about every clocked component to the BCLK so overclocking just a little could make something on your PCH fail, like SATA. So you really need a k-edition CPU to overclock and you're limited by the multiplier.