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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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?