Intel Z77 Panther Point Chipset and Motherboard Preview – ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS and Biostar
by Ian Cutress on April 8, 2012 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Biostar
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- ECS
- Z77
ASRock Z77 Extreme4—Visual Inspection
ASRock are still insistent with bringing the black gold philosophy to its range, as seen here with the Z77 Extreme4 and later with the Z77 Extreme6. The main point you may immediately notice is the size and depth of the heatsinks covering up the power delivery—they are smaller than previous iterations of ASRock boards, and no longer connected via a heatpipe. This is indicative of quite a few boards we are looking at today, due to the low power requirements of the new processors and as a result, the lack of heat produced at stock voltage.
The socket area is relatively clean, especially to the south where we have no large intruding heatsink. The VRM heatsinks however do brush right up against the Intel specifications for the socket area, so you ultimately have only two directions (to the PCIe and towards the memory) in which to play around with big air coolers. The socket area is adorned with five fan headers—three along the top edge of the board and two chassis headers near the top PCIe x1 slot. The other header on board is along the bottom next to the two-digit debug.
The board is actually not a full ATX sized board—from left to right, it measures only 21.8 cm, rather than the standard ATX size of 24.4 cm. As a result this means ASRock do not have to deal with the far right holes in the motherboard for case mounting, and hence why the SATA ports in the bottom right are neatly tucked away. In this corner, we have the six SATA ports from the PCH (two SATA 6 Gbps, four SATA 3 Gbps) and another two from an ASMedia ASM1061 controller (SATA3_A1 is shared with an eSATA port, however). The internal USB 3.0 header is located nearer the 24-pin ATX power connector, perhaps indicating that is for both front case use and rear case use, taking up the space where the first PCIe x1 is.
The chipset heatsink is rather small, compared to Z68 and X79 boards, and is not connected via heatpipe to any other heatsink nearby. On the south side of the board are the standard array of audio and USB headers, along with a fan header and power/reset buttons. It is good also to see the two digit debug on the board as well.
The PCIe layout is indicative of what we will see on many Z77 boards this year, which do not use any form of PCIe lane expansion, such as a PLX chip. In this case, we have an x1, an x16 (x8 on dual card), a gap, a PCI, an x8, another PCI, and another x1. This is some smart thinking, as even with a dual GPU setup there is space for two single width PCIe x1 cards and a PCI card (which contrary to what some people think are still used in reasonable numbers).
Despite the stock image from ASRock looking a little bent on the back panel, we have a typical Z77 arrangement for IO. From left to right, a combination PS/2 port, two USB 3.0 ports (blue), a D-Sub output, a DVI-D output, HDMI, a clear CMOS button, two USB 2.0 ports (black), an eSATA port (red), gigabit Ethernet, two more USB 3.0 ports (blue), and a standard array of audio jacks featuring an optical SPDIF output.
Board Features
| ASRock Z77 Extreme4 | |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | LGA-1155 |
| Chipset | Intel Z77 |
| Power Delivery | 8 + 4 Phase |
| Memory Slots |
Four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB Up to Dual Channel, 1066-2800 MHz |
| Video Outputs | HDMI 1.4a, DVI-D, D-Sub |
| Onboard LAN | Broadcom BCM57781 |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC898 |
| Expansion Slots |
2 x PCIe x16 Gen3 2 x PCIe x1 Gen2 2 x PCI |
| Onboard SATA/RAID |
2 x SATA 6 Gbps (PCH), Support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 2 x SATA 6 Gbps (ASMedia ASM1061) 4 x SATA 3 Gbps (PCH), Support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 |
| USB |
Two USB 3.0 at rear (PCH) Two USB 3.0 at rear (ASMedia 1042) One USB 3.0 header (PCH) |
| Onboard |
4 x SATA 6 Gbps 4 x SATA 3 Gbps 1 x IR Header 1 x CIR Header 1 x COM Header 1 x SPDIF Header Power/Reset Buttons Two Digit Debug LED 6 x Fan Headers Front panel audio connector 3 x USB 2.0 headers (support 6 USB 2.0 ports) 1 x USB 3.0 header (supports 2 USB 3.0 ports) |
| Power Connectors |
1 x 24-pin ATX connector 1 x 8-pin 12V connector |
| Fan Headers |
2 x CPU Fan Header (one 4-pin, one 3-pin) 3 x CHA Fan Headers (one 4-pin, two 3-pin) 1 x PWR Fan Headers (3-pin) |
| IO Panel |
1 x Combo PS/2 Port 1 x HDMI 1.4a 1 x DVI-D 1 x D-Sub 1 x Optical SPDIF 2 x USB 2.0 4 x USB 3.0 1 x eSATA 6 Gbps 1 x Gigabit Ethernet 1 x Clear CMOS Audio Outputs |
| Warranty Period | 3 years from date of purchase |
| Product Page | Link |
Rather than dump a Realtek NIC/Audio combination on this board, ASRock have gone for a Broadcom NIC. This means either they have struck a deal, or it works a lot better for their ASRock LAN software. ASRock are one of few motherboard manufacturers to state they support HDMI 1.4a on their website specifications as well. As one of the cheaper boards of this roundup, the Z77 Extreme4 actually comes away pretty well in terms of features.
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Iketh - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
"handling input in a game engine" means nothing here. What matters is when your input is reflected in a rendered image and displayed on your monitor. That involves the entire package. Lucid basically prevents GPUs from rendering an image that won't get displayed in its entirety, allowing the GPU to begin work on the next image, effectively narrowing the gap from your input to the screen.extide - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
I am sure he knows that. He was just giving a bit of detail as to his exact experience, of which I would bet is far more than most people on here. You have to be very aware of things such as latency and delay when you are handling input in a game engine. I agree with the OP and am skeptical also. The bit that makes me most curious is the transfer of the fully rendered screens from one framebuffer to the other, that has to add some latency, and probably enough to make the entire process worthless. It's not like Lucid has a good track record on stuff like this, I mean we all know how their cross platform SLI/CF took off and worked so well....Iketh - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Why would you need to physically copy framebuffers?? I'm sure pointers are used...I have no idea if this has tangible benefits, but theoretically it does. None of us know until we can test it. I'm more inclined to discredit the people already discrediting Lucid, despite Lucid's track record. That's what you call hating.
Iketh - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
excuse me, you're right... it has to copy the frame from gpu to igpu... what kind of crap tech is this???ssj3gohan - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
Personally, I'm absolutely uninterested in anything 'high-performance', especially fancy gaming stuff. Not to say that I don't think that's a valid market niche, but I see other possibilities.I'm really looking forward to new thin ITX boards with built-in DC-DC converter (i.e. running directly off a 19V brick), and I am especially wondering whether Intel (or Zotac, possibly) is going to build a golden board this time around. Last time, they made DH61AG which was a nice board, but lacked an msata port (kind of a must for a truly thin computer) and 'only' had an H61 chipset.
With H77, I expect it will be possible to make a thin ITX board with USB 3.0 and a fast on-board SSD option, combining this with an HD 4000 equipped processor would enable users to build a truly thin (sub-4 inch thick) computer that fits on the back of their monitor but still provides ample computing power.
Senti - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
It sounds to me that Lucid Virtual V-Sync is just glorified triple buffering with a lot of marketing and a bit of overhead for transferring frames and powering two video cards instead of one. I'm very skeptical on the HyperFormance too.Cavalcade - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
It seems a bit more involved than triple buffering, more like having 2 buffers where the back buffer is not flipped until it is fully rendered. Seems like this would lead to more stuttering, and given the number of times they asked Mr. Cutress to reiterate that this would be a bug, it may be something they are seriously concerned with.Thinking about it a little more, I'm not sure what advantages this system would have over a system with separated input and rendering modules. The academic side of me is extremely interested and hopeful, but the practical developer side of me is going to require a lot more to be brought on board.
Iketh - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
Separate input and rendering modules, as I stated in an earlier post, means nothing. They allow for a responsive mouse cursor, for instance. But, when you actually provide input that alters the RENDERED WORLD, you have to wait for that input to reflect on screen. It doesn't matter how perfectly the software solution is architected, you still have to wait for the rendering of the image after your input.Lucid simply prevents renders that never get displayed in their entirety, allowing the GPU to work on the NEXT image, shortening the time from your input to the screen.
Cavalcade - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
The comment was to indicate that while I have experience writing input systems, rendering is still relatively new to me; simply a qualifier of my impression and opinion.The way I am understanding Lucid, it is attempting to preempt displaying a frame that is not fully rendered in time for the next screen refresh. By presenting a virtual interface to both the GPU and the application, the application believes the frame has been rendered (displaying user input at that time) and proceeds to render the next frame. Thinking more about it, would this reduce the time interval between input reflected in frame one (which was preempted) and frame two (which will be displayed) so that rather than having input sampled at a fixed rate (say 60Hz) and displayed at a variable rate, input would be more closely tied to the frame for which it is intended.
My interest is rising, but it still seems like a rather complex solution to a problem that I either haven't experienced, or which doesn't really bother me.
Iketh - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
it's not preemtively doing anything, except determining if a frame added to the queue will finish rendering in time... if not, it >>>>DOESNT LET THE GPU RENDER IT<<<< and places the previously rendered image in its place, allowing the GPU to immediately begin work on the FOLLOWING frame... that's it... it cuts unneeded frames from queuesas for your input sampling rate question, that's entirely based on how the application is coded to handle input, lucid has nothing to do with this...