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
ASRock
ASRock are now becoming a stable option when it comes to buying motherboards. As a company, they are now producing a large amount of good product with an expected ten million motherboard sales in 2012, and seem to have enough backing to perhaps push it a little forward ahead of other competitors. When it comes to releasing new chipsets, ASRock have recently always been releasing their Extreme series (numbered currently from 3 to 9), and their gaming Fatal1ty series for more enthusiast style users. For the most part, their cheaper offerings often hit a nice price/feature ratio that is comfortable on the wallet.
For the 7-series, ASRock have fully updated their website with models we expect ASRock to launch:
H77M
H77 Pro4-M
H77 Pro4/MVP
Z77 Pro4
Z77 Extreme4-M
Z77 Extreme4
Z77 Extreme6
Fatal1ty Z77 Professional
Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M
Fatal1ty Z77 Performance
ASRock Z77 Extreme6
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If we extrapolate from our look at ASRock boards for P67 and X79, the Z77 Extreme4 and Z77 Extreme6 should be a pair of good boards to consider out of the starting block. As we can see, the Z77 Extreme6 goes all out on the black and gold livery ASRock demonstrated with X79, and plugs in a USB 3.0 front panel which doubly acts as a SSD holder. On the board itself, we still see a 4-pin molex connector rear its ugly head again above the PCIe ports, and if I'm very much mistaken, we also have a Floppy drive port on the south side of the board. I did quiz ASRock once as to why they're putting legacy ports back onto some of their lineup, and the response I got was 'some people want that functionality'. I could perhaps see the requirement in industry when a 6-figure piece of industrial equipment still uses floppy drives (and the cost of upgrading that equipment is too high for USB), however I would relegate that function to the lower end of the spectrum.
ECS
ECS have always been somewhat odd when trying to predict what of their main channel products will reach the market. They tackle each chipset differently, deciding what proportion of the market will invest in it, then design products at various price points to suit that need. This is all despite being a primarily OEM manufacturer and distributor. When it comes to the 7-series chipsets, it is clear that while they will be more important than Sandy Bridge-E was, it could swing either way whether they will outstrip Sandy Bridge before we get Intel's next architecture down the line.
Nevertheless, ECS have dutifully supplied a couple of images of their top-end upcoming boards, and to be honest, I'd say they were taking a leaf out of ASRock's book..
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ECS Z77H2-AX
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The Z77H2-AX is ECS' answer to the 7-series, and it looks packed with functionality. If I'm not mistaken, if we ignore the ASRock-like gold and black, we have a mSATA port blow the SATA ports, and built in Wifi and Bluetooth modules on the IO panel. This is despite also having video outputs. The ECS board I reviewed for X79, whilst it was under rebate, was quite a bargain in terms of functionality and price, so I hope that ECS can deliver similar for the 7-series.
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yuhong - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
The Z68/P67/H67/H61 chipsets don't have them either.. All the MBs with PCI slots had to use a bridge chip to add them.moozoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
>There are still a lot of sound cards and TV tuners that are mainly PCI.Looking at http://www.netplus.com.au/product-list/SO40/Sound_... where I buy my gear. They are "mainly" pci-e
Seriously buy a new sound card.
There a plenty of good PCI-e sound cards from cheap though to expensive.
I'd imagine most motherboards are bought for new systems and people buying new systems who want a sound card are going to want a pci-e one.
That and the fact that motherboard sound is good enough for 90% of the market is why the manufacturers are dropping PCI.
PCI can not die soon enough.
I just wish that Intel had a Ivy Bridge that has the GPU and twice the PCI-e lanes.
Wardrop - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
I say death to PCI. It's about time PCI became a non-standard feature. It's only been super-ceded for 8 years. I've personally consciously avoided all PCI add-on cards for the last 5-6 years; sometimes these PCI-e cards would cost more or be harder to source than their PCI equivalent, but I was guaranteeing future compatibility (and ensuring I had no bandwidth bottlenecks). I'm now glad that every add-on card in our house is PCI-e, except for my second TV tuner which is only PCI because the damn motherboard only had 2 PCI-e slots (already used by the GPU and the primary TV tuner) - which is exactly why I'm glad PCI is finally being dropped.oldabelincoln - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
The sound card I understand. A TV tuner on PCI I don't understand. Before even the change to broadcast ATSC, tuner cards were PCI-e, at least the ones I looked at that supported ATSC, and with cable cos going to all digital output, I wonder what tuner you are using and what kind of signal you re recording. I'm not disputing the issue, just a bit puzzled.For my part, I use a PCI-e Hayppauge 2250, and certainly wouldn't have minded if it was PCI, so I could free up two PCI-e slots that the 2250 and daughter board use up, and get some use out of the unused PCI space.
LoneWolf15 - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link
@oldabelincoln:What does PCI vs PCIe have to do with whether a tuner is analog or digital? There are PCI cards with digital tuners too; Hauppauge's HVR-1150 is an example.
@the earlier poster:
Having said that, the price of being an enthusiast, or at least being one who upgrades to newer high-end platforms, some legacy support will eventually die. I transitioned to a PCIe sound card and a PCIe tuner card knowing I wouldn't always have support for PCI cards. There are a few very specific cards out there that are still PCI only, but usually they are such that and end-user isn't likely to change the configuration of a system using them. Good sound cards and TV tuners are available in PCIe, and are reasonably priced when compared to a $200-350 Z77 mainboard.
Belard - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
That is the thing, intel wants ALL legacy ports off the boards. It lowers costs, lowers point of failure, makes things easier.PCI has done well, it can go now. Ouch... I think I just realized my Tuner-card is PCI, nope... its PCIe. I'm good to go.
For those who need PCI support, they can go with AMD boards, for now...
philosofool - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
I'm a little confused by this comment, because it looks to me as if GIGABYTE has some (but not all) boards including some legacy PCI.I get what you're saying about wanting them on your board. If you have an old but good sound card, an upgrade is expensive and probably doesn't add to your overall experience. It's just a part you had to replace.
I use a PCI 802.11g card that I absolutely love. I never have connectivity failures that require a reboot of my system. You can't say that for all wireless cards, and I'm not looking forward to the point where I have to replace this one.
Logsdonb - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I would like to see some ivy bridge / PCI 3 benchmarks with crossfire configurations (ATI 7870s) and high speed SSDs. Most benchmarks published so far only have 1 GPU and don't really show the capability of the new PCI graphics. I am really looking forward to upgrading with CPU, GPU, and PCI upgrades all at the same time.I would like to see very nice gaming / photo and video editing solutions without having to create a massive space heater that is loud and consumes massive amounts of energy to run. In other words, a nice machine that is also nice to live with.
ravisurdhar - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
The sudden appearance of mSATA everywhere kinda surprised me...is this supposed to be used for an SRT drive, for users that don't want a full-sized SSD?peterfares - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
That and for small form-factor PCs. With a tiny SSD that plugs right into the motherboard it basically takes up no room. This will also be great for HTPCs, too. If you don't need local storage, a small SSD is awesome.