Leaked Intel Roadmap Says X79 Chipset in Q4 2011

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This Chinese website (translator required) has posted what they claim to be leaked screenshots of Intel's upcoming desktop chipset roadmap. The site has been up and down all day so I snagged these screenshots for those of you that can't reach the site.
 
No Thunderbolt or USB 3, kind of lame in those departments. But this will be my next chipset probably.
 
Personally looking forward to the Q1, 2012 stuff shown on that roadmap. That's only ...9 months away!
 
What precisely are Sandy Bridge E processors? Is this something beyond the K-series?
 
We're still stuck with two PCI-e X16 slots?

At this rate I'm hoping Bulldozer brings something better along.
 
"Supports performance overclocking in the CPU"

does that mean bclk overclocking?
 
German Muscle said:
No PCI-E v3.0 and more native USB3.0 support?
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That slide is probably only referring to the x79's PCIe lanes. All reports elsewhere put 32(36??) PCIe 3 lanes on the CPU itself.

The big surprise for me is no legacy PCI support is included. Although I suspect a fair number of full ATX boards will add it via a bridge chip, otherwise they'll be hard pressed to hang all the accessories off the southbridge and still be able to connect 6 or 7 total slots.
 
LordCalin said:
I'm likin the 14 sata ports... that combined with freenas... yum
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It's 10 SATA 6 Gb/s ports, though. Why they even bother with 4 SATA 3 Gb/s ports I'll never fathom...
So they'll be releasing a brand new USB 2.0 platform exactly 3 years after USB 3.0 specs were finalized? That also I'll never understand.
Both technologies are backward compatible, for Pete's sake!
 
Glad they are getting rid of PCI, haven't used one in ages.

Yeah it sucks there isn't native USB3 support, WTF Intel, but I'm liking 14 SATA ports though that seems overkill but great if you want to build a server with multiple hard drives.
 
John Vuong said:
Glad they are getting rid of PCI, haven't used one in ages.

Yeah it sucks there isn't native USB3 support, WTF Intel, but I'm liking 14 SATA ports though that seems overkill but great if you want to build a server with multiple hard drives.
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+1

Also like all the overhead for sata drives and built in raid.
 
Ya I think I'm gona be skipping this one as well and stick with my current X58 setup till the sandy bridge refresh comes out.
 
well just got the i5 2500k, so i'll stay with it unless my work place makes and upgrade (hopping i'm still working there) i'll go with new setup.
 
Hey another leaked spec :eek: Now how did that happen... Why don't they all forgo this formality and release ALL information 6 months before the release of things?

Now, can someone leak if theres going to be a mITX board of one of these :D
 
messerchmidt said:
meh they are dragging their feet on the s1366 successor

meh my i7 920 is fine for now
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So true, i'm glad that i upgraded to the i7 920 and P6T Deluxe on release, has ended up lasting me years! :) Longest setup i think i'll ever have to be honest.
 
I've been holding fast to my X38 and E8400 since 2008. :D

I'm glad I passed up the latest iteration of Sandy Bridge stuff, but with the addition of Win7x64, decent SSDs, and dealing with rather large files in some demanding applications, she's showing her age a bit. This was the first Intel rig I'd built, and unlike my old AMD stuff -- we're going back to Athlon days -- hasn't had a hiccup in the past three years, save the 8800GT that died last month (replaced with a Powercolor Radeon HD 6950), and performed very well the entire time. I credit ASUS as much as anything; there's an A7N8X Deluxe still kicking around here, too...from 2003-ish...?

I'm not terribly put off by a lack of USB 3.0. Honestly, I don't have any devices that currently support it, and I really don't anticipate buying or creating any that do anytime soon. Maybe when we start seeing more-affordable USB flash drives, say in the 64GB-for-$30 range, I'll bite. Don't laugh, they're under $100 already.

I can't imagine that the motherboard companies won't offer their own X79 boards withOUT USB 3.0 chips, among other peripheral devices. I just hope they keep the Intel audio. I'm so fawking sick of dealing with ANALog Devices, Creative, etc....
 
Thinking about it, i though LGA2011 was going to be PCI-E 3.0 and USB 3.0 native. Infact thinking about it, 2011 pins? Is there any info on why so many?
 
New chipset without native USB 3.0 or PCI 3.0? New SSD line without SATA 6 Gb/s? WTH, Intel?

Am I mistaken that leaks like this usually come from Chinese or other south-east Asian websites? It really seems like a disproportionate number of leaks relating to road maps, engineering sample benchmarks, unreleased presentation information, etc, come from far east websites.

If I'm not mistake, why is that? Do English based tech websites avoid this material intentionally? Perhaps fear of losing access to pre-release samples? NDAs?
 
Rossi~ said:
Thinking about it, i though LGA2011 was going to be PCI-E 3.0 and USB 3.0 native. Infact thinking about it, 2011 pins? Is there any info on why so many?
Click to expand...

LGA2011 is supposed to support quad-channel memory. More channels requires more pins.
 
Levii said:
Am I mistaken that leaks like this usually come from Chinese or other south-east Asian websites? It really seems like a disproportionate number of leaks relating to road maps, engineering sample benchmarks, unreleased presentation information, etc, come from far east websites.
Click to expand...

Most of the tech is manafactuered and researched there. The Intel buildings in the US are just big brightly lit lounges with guys dancing with robots. All the robot dancing is also why they make weird decisions like keeping USB 2.0 etc.
 
Rossi~ said:
Thinking about it, i though LGA2011 was going to be PCI-E 3.0 and USB 3.0 native. Infact thinking about it, 2011 pins? Is there any info on why so many?
Click to expand...

Yeah at this rate I won't even upgrade to IB. Haswell here I come!
 
John Vuong said:
Glad they are getting rid of PCI, haven't used one in ages.
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Don't hold your breath. I wouldn't be surprised if many board makers install a PCI-PCIe bridge chip. 8 southbridge lanes is going to be rather tight on a full ATX board after adding up all the other onboard devices:

1 Non-Intel Audio
1 Firewire (~2/3rds of P67 boards on newegg have it, so it still being around in 9 mo seems reasonable)
2 Non-Intel NIC x2
1 USB 3 controller (2 ports)

This is 5 lanes. A 2nd USB3 controller is 6, leaving 2 1x slots to place between the 2 or 3 slots running off the CPUs PCIe Lanes. Even though it doesn't matter 99% of the time empty slots look bad.

If you use a PCI-PCIe bridge chip though, you free 1 lane directly (audio + firewire) and can use PCI slots to fill in the holes in the expansion card layout.

If you want to look at it from a different direction; despite having a PCI controller to hang odds and ends on, 25/26 P67 boards on newegg have at least 1 PCI slot, most have 2. The CPU gives one more slot worth of lanes, while the PCI controllers loss probably moves 2 or 3 devices back onto the southbridges PCIe lanes.

If they had 4-6x USB3 ports on the southbridge, then I could see most boards not bothering, but as it is I suspect legacy free boards will be the minority unless mobo designers suddenly decide in mass that intel audio/nic's are good enough.

John Vuong said:
Yeah it sucks there isn't native USB3 support, WTF Intel, but I'm liking 14 SATA ports though that seems overkill but great if you want to build a server with multiple hard drives.
Click to expand...

If I had to guess, the huge number of SATA ports is in partial compensation for the loss of the PCI controller since it means high end boards won't need to burn PCIe lanes on an extra SATA controller or 2 just to get their stats up. The 4 3GB ports probably indicate that the 6GB controller takes up significantly more die space, and were added to plump the count cheaply since most systems will have at least a few devices that won't benefit from the faster connection at all (optical drives, eSata ports, etc).
 
DanNeely said:
The 4 3GB ports probably indicate that the 6GB controller takes up significantly more die space, and were added to plump the count cheaply since most systems will have at least a few devices that won't benefit from the faster connection at all (optical drives, eSata ports, etc).
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You don't see USB 1.0 ports for mice and keyboards on any motherboard, there is just no justification today for implementing mixed solutions such as SATA 3 and 6 Gb/s. Carrying two separate SATA controllers on the chipset definitely takes up more die space than just one. 2 different versions of SATA also make it more difficult to plug any SATA device, you'll need to number or color-code the headers to make sure you don't waste a 6 Gb/s port for the BD/DVD player, etc.

I think eSATA could totally benefit from 6 Gb/s, there are already pocket-sized external SSD drives or enclosures that are great when you need more portable storage than USB keys can offer, and some recent SSDs already saturate the 3 Gb/s channel, there's no telling what kind of new devices or features will be lost to you if you buy in late 2011 a computer with 7.5-year old technology when the current one has been finalized 3 years earlier and devices started to appear 1 year after that. That's a very long time in the PC world.
 
Chimel said:
You don't see USB 1.0 ports for mice and keyboards on any motherboard, there is just no justification today for implementing mixed solutions such as SATA 3 and 6 Gb/s. Carrying two separate SATA controllers on the chipset definitely takes up more die space than just one. 2 different versions of SATA also make it more difficult to plug any SATA device, you'll need to number or color-code the headers to make sure you don't waste a 6 Gb/s port for the BD/DVD player, etc.

I think eSATA could totally benefit from 6 Gb/s, there are already pocket-sized external SSD drives or enclosures that are great when you need more portable storage than USB keys can offer, and some recent SSDs already saturate the 3 Gb/s channel, there's no telling what kind of new devices or features will be lost to you if you buy in late 2011 a computer with 7.5-year old technology when the current one has been finalized 3 years earlier and devices started to appear 1 year after that. That's a very long time in the PC world.
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Each sata plug needs seperate controller hardware. Even if it's all in a single chip, you don't get the extra ports for free, and while we don't see USB1 ports mixed in with USB2 ports any longer when USB2 first came out the ports were mixed types because the former controllers were smaller and most people didn't need a full set. As time, and processes passed the USB2 controllers got small enough that there were no longer any significant savings so the systems went all USB2. IMO the bigger waste is the number of 6gb ports. Anyone who can afford that many SSDs, is going to be using a high end PCIe raid card not the onboard softraid in the chipset anyway; they could easily have dropped 4 or 6 of them without any real loss.
 
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