Z170 Chipset and ASUS Deluxe: Adding 20 Lanes of PCIe 3.0
The Core i7-6700K and its Skylake architecture bring with it a new processor socket, LGA 1151. This is not backwards compatible with any other processors and Haswell/Broadwell will not install into motherboards built for Skylake either. The move to DDR4 memory as well as a faster DMI3 implementation required Intel to move on to another iteration of the LGA design and, this time at least, the advantages of the new chipset are noteworthy.
Intel's Z170 chipset will be including on the motherboards of choice for Skylake. Thus far I have only had hands-on time with the ASUS Z170-Deluxe (and Morry has had the ASUS Z170-A) but both offer some compelling features and options that were previously unavailable on Z97 boards.
The most important feature on the Z170 chipset, and the one that allows the chipset to enable many new features, is the move to the 8.0 GT/s capable DMI3 bus. This is the interface between the processor and the chipset itself, and it was previously limited to speeds that restricted some pretty basic configurations. Allyn knows all about not being able to utilize all six SATA ports in a RAID-0 array without limiting performance because of the slower DMI2 connection on the Haswell generation platforms. With Skylake, this should no longer be an issue and, thanks to other changes on the chipset, allows for a lot more flexibility from motherboard designers.
A close second in importance in my mind is the move to support up to 20x lanes of PCI Express 3.0 on the Z170 chipset! Compared to the Z87 and Z97 chipset that shipped with 8x lanes of PCIe 2.0, this is a dramatic improvement and allows vendors to create a collection of accessories for Z170 motherboard that otherwise would not be possible. Think of multiple USB 3.1 controllers, additional PCIe storage connectivity, support for more (and faster) add-in cards, etc.
The only other change includes a move to 10x USB 3.0 ports and/or 14x USB 2.0 ports. You still have access to 6x SATA III / 6.0 Gbps ports, Intel Rapid Storage Technology, Gigabit Ethernet MAC, etc. On a side note, the Intel RST software will now support RAID configurations of PCIe and NVMe storage devices – so those of you crazy enough to want to run multiples of them in your system will now have that capability. Thanks to the DMI3 connection back to the processor you can fully utilize a pair of x2 PCIe 3.0 SSDs in RAID-0 and get maximum performance.
On the processor side, Skylake still supports the same x16 lanes of PCI Express 3.0 that can be divided into a single slot for maximum performance or into a pair of x8 slots and even a single x8 and 2×4. Interestingly, with the added support for 20 lanes of PCIe 3.0 on the Z170 chipset, it SHOULD be possible for NVIDIA to implement support for 3-Way SLI on Skylake – something it has not done for Haswell. Though as we continue to see the decline in support for 3-Way SLI and for 3-Way CrossFire, I doubt this is a priority.
The ASUS Z170-Deluxe
This is by no means a review of the ASUS Z170-Deluxe, but I thought as the only Z170 motherboard in the office today, it deserved a quick overview.
If you are looking for a board with a ton of features, this is the place to be. Let's get a high level overview of what it offers:
- 6 x USB 3.1 ports
- 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C port
- 4 x front USB 3.0 support
- Dual Gigabit Intel LAN
- 3×3 802.11ac Wireless
- DDR4-3466 memory support
- Hyper M.2 Mini Adapter card
- NVMe U.2 device support
- HDMI 2.0 support (IGP)
Oh, and maybe the coolest feature of all: the LED lights on the chipset cooler are controllable to 256 color choices, can be adjusted to "dance to the beat of your music" or can be set to indicate CPU temperature. It is actually a really cool effect in person.
Of course, ASUS has tweaked the motherboard's UEFI implementation as well to improve fan controls, make overclocking easier and to improve the utility of functions like UEFI updates. Check out Morry's overview of the Z170-A for a bit more info on these areas and check back soon for reviews of these and other Z170 motherboards!
looks better!
looks better!
Every reviewer keeps downing
Every reviewer keeps downing on the integrated graphics, but according to the linked article, DirectX 12 will utilize the integrated along with the discrete. They say it will be like having another graphics card…
http://time.com/3975043/windows-10-microsoft-gamers/
‘How many video cards do you have in your PC? Think carefully (I didn’t, and told Wardell, who asked me the same question, just one). Wardell reminded me most modern PCs have at least two (not counting extremely high-end systems with cards run in tandem, in which case the number would be three or more).
“Everyone forgets about the integrated graphics card on the motherboard that you’d never use for gaming if you have a dedicated video card,” says Wardell. “With DirectX 12, you can fold in that integrated card as a seamless coprocessor. The game doesn’t have to do anything special, save support DirectX 12 and have that feature enabled. As a developer I don’t have to figure out which thing goes to what card, I just turn it on and DirectX 12 takes care of it.”
Wardell notes the performance boost from pulling in the integrated video card is going to be heavily dependent on the specific combination—the performance gap between integrated video cards over the past half-decade isn’t small—but at the high end, he says it could be as significant as DirectX 12’s ability to tap the idle cores in your CPU. Add the one on top of the other and, if he’s right, the shift at a developmental level starts to sound like that rare confluence of evolutionary plus the letter ‘r’.’
What’s in this new CPU for
What’s in this new CPU for video editors?
Dude, upgrade your Handbrake
Dude, upgrade your Handbrake software. The new version is way better optimized for 4+ core setups.
Also, how come nobody is comparing the 6700K to the 5820K? I’d rather pay a little more and get 6 cores instead of 4.
if review sites compare 5820K
if review sites compare 5820K with 6700K no one will buy the 6700K.
Looking forward to the next
Looking forward to the next I7 WITHOUT integrated GPU… 🙂 CMonnnn Intel !
Lol I’ll just stick with this
Lol I’ll just stick with this Phenom II x6 for another year. Someone get back to me when CPU performance has increased by an order of magnitude (aka when Intel gets real competition again).
I hope PC gamers do not get
I hope PC gamers do not get these CPUs. I don’t want to see people waste money on this platform if you are in the market for building a gaming PC. The cost of DDR4 right now is just stupid expensive and motherboards for this are expensive. There are no incredible gains with either and you’d save a ton of money going with a 4790k or something similar on LGA 1150.
Except if you actually look
Except if you actually look at prices, DDR4-2400 4GB sticks are cheaper than their DDR3 counterparts. $30 vs $33
I’m one of the people hanging
I’m one of the people hanging grimly on to my old X58 platforms, of which I have two on ASUS P6T motherboards.
I’m in no rush to upgrade GPU from a pair of GTX680’s in SLI, and no rush for faster HDD with 2x 240GB in Raid, so the question I have is, is it REALLY worth Dropping $2k to upgrade a motherboard / ram / cpu / psu.
Last year, for AUS$100 each, I replaced my i7-920 parts with Xeon hexacore units, which at 4ghz / 6 thread+HT (12 thread) seem to do fine.
If I look at the IPC@3.5ghz above, and reckon that a new 6700K part will be a full 1/3rd faster per core, it strikes me that I’m only behind on single core performance with even such an old setup! 6 cores at 1.0 each vs 4 cores at 1.33 each for example, even if I’m generous and say a 6700K perfoms 1.5x per core of the Xeon, I’m still packing the same processing punch.
Is that a fair assessment, or am I missing something? –
What I’m really asking is, if you have an old X58 platform – and aren’t aiming for quad-sli or something requiring more pcie lanes than you have, isn’t a $100 i7 to Xeon upgrade going to be enough to keep you in the game?
Is the IPC increase on a quad core worth the $2000 price tag, because I suspect you wouldn’t notice the difference much!
I tend to play slightly older games, just finished mass effect series and bioshock for example, so I suspect the very latest titles would give issues to my setup, so I know it’s adequate for me as I never see the CPU taxed much.
Buying chipsets with crappy
Buying chipsets with crappy on-board gpu’s will encourage them to make more and the fact is that the speed is topping out because of the limitations of wave speed through the material the chips are made of, bus speed of external gpu’s and the limits of the expanion slots speed are the real limits still left, that and doing all the binary physics and mathing out the hardware to function 3-dimensionally and running the signal to and from an expansion slot takes time.