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
Features To Watch Out For
A few of the products listed here have some exciting new features and technologies, and the respective companies are quite proud of these. A lot of the time when a company advertises a 'unique' feature, it is a load of marketing fluff, but this time round I think a few of them are worth a mention.
ASRock BIOS Update from Internet within BIOS
ASRock have a new software technology coming along to aid BIOS updating. Their feature, as I've been told, will allow users to press a button in the BIOS which will let the motherboard connect to the internet, get and download the latest BIOS, then apply it. All at the touch of a button. Sounds good, right?
A little caveat: it will be for Ethernet wired connections only, where programs are not needed to access the internet, or through an ICS terminal. This may not be available with launch BIOSes, but should be a feature across their Z77 range soon.
ASUS T-Topology Memory
ASUS have outsmarted Intel and have decided to take their technology to another level. This is specifically in terms of memory, and how it is routed through the motherboard. Typically, routing through the memory would occur in a daisy chain type environment, whereby if data was in the furthest memory slot away from the board, it would take longer to get to the CPU, and perhaps cause synchronization issues and delays—all reads had to be done serially between sticks in the same channel.
With ASUS' new technology, they are essentially parallelizing memory reads that are commonly done serially between memory banks. This is part of their 'T-Topology' memory subsystem, which allows synchronization to be dealt with in hardware. This, according to ASUS, should allow for up to a 15% memory overclock beyond the previous methodology, where the motherboard is the limiting factor. In this circumstance, we could be seeing some new memory records being set in dual channel memory.
I have probed ASUS for specific details on how this works, and I am awaiting a response. I hope that by the time we are allowed to release our Ivy Bridge results on Z77 that I will have something more technical to pass on to you about how this works.
ASUS UASP Technology
While not strictly speaking a new technology, ASUS is the first to implement new USB protocols in Windows 7 under Intel platforms. Current USB protocols are very limited, insisting transfers are serial and rigorously monitored. ASRock first broke that with their XFast USB software (note, this was licensed to ASRock), which essentially implemented a new driver protocol. This had beneficial results on USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 transfers, both peak and in regular use. However, ASUS have gone one-step further.
Their software, enabled in X79, implements UASP, which stands for 'USB Attached SCSI Protocol'. This allows the operating system to use the SCSI command set for transferring data across the interface—this at the basic level involves command queuing, out of order execution, and hardware support for streams across USB 3.0.
To take advantage of UASP required a UASP compliant device, typically a modern USB 3.0 device using certain controllers. Unfortunately, that is a requirement of the protocol, not of the hardware itself. But hopefully this time around we will be able to test just how good it is, and whether your next USB 3.0 device will be able to take advantage of an ASUS only feature.
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extide - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Do you even know what it means to preempt a frame? Cavalcade is describing the technology correctly. He is explaining pretty much the same thing as you are but you just don't get it..Also separate input and rendering modules means a lot. Typically a game engine will have a big loop that will check input, draw the frame, and restart (amongst other things of course) but to split that into two independent loops is what he is talking about.
Iketh - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
You really should look up "preemption." This is not what is happening... CLOSE, but not quite. Preemption is not the right word at all. This makes him incorrect and I kindly tried explaining. You are incorrect in backing him up and then accusing me of being inept. Guess what that makes you?On top of that, he's also not talking about splitting input and rendering into two loops. Not even close. How did you come up with this idea? He's asking how the input polling is affected with this technology. It is not, and can not, unless polling is strictly tied to framerate.
I want to be clear that I'm not for this technology. I think it won't offer any tangible benefits, especially if you're already over 100 fps, and they want to power up a second GPU in the process... I'm just trying to help explain how it's supposed to work.
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.Iketh - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
mistake post, sorryRyan Smith - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
The bug comment is in regards to HyperFormance. Virtual V-Sync is rather simple (it's just more buffers) and should not introduce rendering errors.Ryan Smith - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
Virtual V-Sync is totally a glorified triple buffering, however this is a good thing.http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/triplebu...
Triple buffering as we know it - with 2 back buffers and the ability to disregard a buffer if it's too old - doesn't exist in most DirectX games and can't be forced by the video card. Triple buffering as implemented for most DirectX games is a 3 buffer queue, which means every frame drawn is shown, and the 3rd buffer adds another frame of input lag.
On paper (note: I have yet to test this), Virtual V-Sync should behave exactly like triple buffering. The iGPU back buffer allows Lucid to accept a newer frame regardless of whether the existing frame has been used or not, as opposed to operating as a queue. This has the same outcome as triple buffering, primarily that the GPU never goes idle due to full buffers and there isn't an additional frame of input lag.
The overhead of course remains to be seen. Lucid seems confident, but this is what benchmarking is for. But should it work, I'd be more than happy to see the return of traditional triple buffering.
HyperFormance is another matter of course. Frame rendering time prediction is very hard. The potential for reduced input lag is clear, but this is something that we need to test.
DanNeely - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
Lucid was very confident in their Hydra solution; but it never performed even close to SLI/xFire; and after much initial hype being echoed by the tech press it just disappeared. I'll believe they have something working well when I see it; but not before.JNo - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
Thisvailr - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
Page 8 quote: "The VRM power delivery weighs in at 6 + 4 phase, which is by no means substantial (remember the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 was 8 + 4 and less expensive)."Yet: the "Conclusions" chart (page 14) shows the same board having 10 + 4 power.
Which is correct?
flensr - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
I'm bummed that ASUS didn't include mSATA connectors. Small mSATA SSDs would make for great cache or boot drives with no installation hassles and they're pretty cheap and available at the low capacities you'd want for a cache drive. That's a feature I will be looking for with my next mobo purchase.Ditching USB 2.0 is also one of the next steps I'll be looking for. Not having to spend a second thinking about which port to plug something in to will be nice once USB 2.0 is finally laid to rest. Having only 4 USB 3.0 ports is stupidly low this long after the release of the standard, and it's hampering the development of USB 3.0 devices.
Finally, I've been repeatedly impressed by my Intel NICs over the last decade. They simply perform faster and more reliably than the other chips. I look for an Intel NIC when I shop for mobos.