A Brief Look at Some Upcoming 7-Series Motherboards
by Ian Cutress on March 9, 2012 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- H77
- Z77
MSI
Whilst CeBIT is in full swing, MSI, along with the other manufacturers, has used the opportunity to showcase their future 7-series products. Alongside the X79 Big Bang-XPower II (which I recently reviewed and liked rather a lot), MSI is promoting their Z77A-GD80 – a 7-series motherboard with Thunderbolt support. Anand was able to have a quick look at the board at CES before the Thunderbolt port was officially added, and VR-Zone has confirmed that the model on show at CeBIT does have it on board. We expect this little extra will cause an extra $20-$30 on the price of these boards however, so it may be possible that there are Thunderbolt/non-Thunderbolt versions of various products up and down each vendor's line.
Out of the blocks, MSI is officially treating us to at least seven boards across the 7-series:
Z77A-GD80
Z77A-GD65
Z77A-GD55
Z77A-G45
Z77MA-G45
ZH77-G43
B75A-G43
MSI Z77A-GD80
In a style common of previous MSI boards, the blue-black livery is included with an SFC (Super Ferrite Choke) power delivery. We also get OC Genie buttons and voltage read points as is common on MSI's top end products. In a similar style to the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H mentioned previously, users of three GPUs on a system such as this will perhaps lose a large amount of the functionality on the bottom of the board. Nevertheless, the USB 3.0 header on board is at 90 degrees, focusing the usage of such a port for the front of the case.
Biostar
Biostar is not a company we've had much chance to look at here at AnandTech for a while, however their few motherboard releases over the past year have come and are available for purchase. For the launch of the 7-series products, Biostar plan on launching a series of five boards:
TZ77XE4
TZ77XE3
TZ77A
TZ77B
TZ77MXE
However one motherboard has graced my inbox in any shape or form - the TZ77XE4:
Biostar TZ77EX4
Biostar have also gone with a three-GPU style setup, this time plumping for a three slot gap between all the GPUs, giving air for them to breathe a little better. Aside from this, there is not a lot I can gather from the solitary, low resolution image, and solid information is not forthcoming until I receive a response from Biostar. Information will be updated when I have it!
Conclusion
We have a lot to look forward to when it comes to these new and exciting 7-series motherboards. Let us know what you would like to see!
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fatpenguin - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I was very excited to find that Ivy Bridge is supposed to support up to 3 Display Port outputs natively, since it would eliminate any need for an external graphics card (for me personally). Have you seen any vendors offer this on any current 7-series motherboards?IlllI - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
you guys should do some review with m-itx motherboards.Knifeshade - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I think this is one of the most interesting boards to come out of CeBIT '12. For people who don't need so much expansion slots, they're moving to smaller platforms and this mini ITX board really feels like it's got everything its older siblings have but in a much smaller package. I hope you guys can get one in to have a look over.James5mith - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Why aren't more companies putting out products with displayport? It's a great interface, and both Dell and HP have adapted to it wholeheartedly. I personally can't wait until the industry gives up VGA and DVi in favor of it.lbeyak - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
High end Z77 boards. I like the look of most of the Asus boards (especially the Sabertooth, 5 year warranty /drools).Reviews on boards with dual NICs would be nice as well.
Integrated Wi-Fi / Bluetooth is interesting to me as well, and I like that they are included on some boards.
Jumpman23 - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Why can't all the usb ports be of the 3.0 flavor? Is it a cost issue? I would assume that usb ports are a fairly small portion of the overall cost for these manufacturers so why not make them all 3.0?IanCutress - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Primarily, it is cost - Z77 gets a couple of USB 3.0 from the chipset, then the rest is controllers. Each controller comes at a cost (I don't know how much, but with markup, probably $5 a piece perhaps[?]), which then gets passed on.Personally, I like to have two or three USB 2.0. When I install an OS for a review, it's via a USB stick - the install package doesn't have a USB 3.0 driver installed, so it can't detect itself when it is loaded (or won't detect my mouse or keyboard). Odd I know, but it means I have to dig out an OS disk if a board goes for solely USB 3.0.
repoman27 - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link
There are plenty of USB devices (most of the ones in currently in existence, actually) that will never benefit from USB 3.0's additional capabilities. While I agree that it would be simpler for the end user if all the ports were the same, the 7-series chipsets provide 4x USB 3.0 ports and 10x USB 2.0. Since you get the 2.0 ports for free, why not use them?I actually believe it's more of a bandwidth problem than a straight cost issue for Ivy Bridge. (I was under the impression that the Renesas μPD720201 4-port controllers only run about $3 these days.) However, if you were to make all 6 of the SATA ports 6 Gbps and all 14 of the USB ports SuperSpeed on a 7-series motherboard, you'd be adding an additional ~26 Gbps of potential I/O to a southbridge that's only got a 20 Gbps DMI connecting it to the CPU.
Dr. Mobius - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
I would really like to see EVGA's line up.Breach1337 - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
Great, I personally would love to get the Asus Z77 Sabertooth, but I'm still confused by these PCIe specs? AFAIK, IB has only 16 PCI-E lanes (although they are 3.0 lanes). So if the boards say:2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) *2
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black) *3
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1
And I have two PCIe 3.0 cards running x8 SLI where would the extra lanes come for the rest of the stuff - all these PCIe 2.0 slots? Say, if I plug in a 3rd card - my Creative PCI-e 2.0 x1 card would that hurt the 2 x8 SLI's performance?