does anyone know if it'll be possible to use one of the two peg- slots (the ones provided by the cpu) for an expansion card like e.g. sata III, USB3)? or are these slots for graphics cards only?
PCIe slots are PCIe slots, you can put whatever you want into them. The catch is that by putting even a 1x card into one of the CPU slots you've dropped the 2nd down to 8x. If you're using a mid-range GPU this shouldn't matter, but the drop in xFire scaling that turned up in a few games on LGA1156 (in particular crysis) indicates that an 8x slot is starting to bottleneck a 4890x2 card; which means that the more affordable forthcoming 5850/5870/g300 cards will also probably suffer.
It's a pity PCIe lanes can only be allocated in factor of 2 groupings. Being able to split the CPU lanes as 15/1, 12/4, etc would hopefully allow enough BW for even the next generations high end GPUs while also allowing a second device a connection that doesn't get bottlenecked by DMI congestion.
I wanted to wait for USB3 and SATA3 b4 upgrading, but that will be a while yet, and not devices plus extremely high early prices makes it a little offputting still. But the current SBs are quite gimped. They can't even support Marvell SATA 6Gbps chips. Only the p7p55d used a workaround with a PEX bridge chip to funnel 4x lanes to the 1x physical supported on the Marvell SATA chip. Oh well, at least even the G2 intel can't do much more than SATA2. We will have to wait for the magic number 3 to get to i/o nirvana.
Im also waiting for the new SATA and USB to show up. Don't really care if there are devices for it, I just don't want to use expansion cards to get stuff to work.
As for chipset, I think its quite obvious that Intel is moving its grey way of doing business from the processor area, to the chipset area.
In addition to what Casper42 has said, can you even buy a ICHR10 by itself, or does intel only sell them with a northbridge chip? I cynically suspect that the very low price of the southbridge is so that intel can pretend to allow 3rd parties to sell a separate SB to pair with an intel NB as an anti-trust gimic while still making doing so sufficiently expensive vs their solution that they've protected their mainstream mobo income stream.
I'd have to answer with a question. Do the Lynnfield CPUs -- i5 750, i7 860, and i7 870 -- require the P55 i.e., are they incompatible with X58/ICH10? Can you build a socket 1156 motherboard without a P55 chipset? I have no idea, but I'll guess that someone here does.
Common
SATA: South
Audio: South
USB: South
Network: South
Socket 1156, which is what the Core i5 (and that stupidly named Core i7 800 series) all use currently only has 1 Chipset available:
The P55
So to answer your question, NO, you cannot (currently) get a 1156 without a P55.
It does raise a valid question though. If you look at what the ICH10R provides, its damn near identical to what the PCH does, also uses DMI as an interconnect and costs a fraction of the P55.
So it might be technically possible, but someone alot smarter than I must know why it is not being done.
my understanding was they changed the architecture of the P55 PCH in such a way so as to make it physically impossible to interface the CPU directly to an ICH10R instead, both to protect their chipset business and to prevent manufacturers from breaking the product somehow in the redesign stage such that it looks like it was intel's fault, giving them bad press as a result. ultimately they did design the CPU and the chipset, so if they were made capable of interfacing, but it just didn't work and whoever tried to fix it F*ed up, then joe sixpack out there would blame intel for delivering them a crappy computer as a result. intel also has the H55 chipset in the pipes, which will be designed to interface with the core i3 CPU/GPU MCM by providing video outputs on the board, something P55 lacks as of now. if you think about the price segment that a board which just uses CPU + ICH10R would fall into, it will cut directly into the price segment in which H55 will fall into when it is released. in the end, you would end up with a lot of confused customers and a ton of boards which didnt fall anywhere in intel's marketing lineup either lol
Gary - Do you have an ETA for the motherboard articles, particularly the review of the MSI uATX and ATX offerings?
I'm guessing the P55 motherboard articles are all complete or nearly complete but will be released over the course of the next few days instead of all at once... just curious how long to wait before we see the MSI reviews since those interest me most.
If it's anything like PCIe, then it would be using 8b/10b encoding. So 10Gb is 1GB, and since it's full duplex 1GB + 1GB = 2GB. At any rate I'm just fixing typos, Gary can tell you more.
I believe the DMI link runs at 1GHz, thus you could say it's a "1Gbps" link. However, it's also 16-bits wide, and a byte is 8 bits, so it's "2GBps". Then you have to account for the fact that it's really a full-duplex stream, so it's actually half that bandwidth in each direction -- 1GBps up and 1GBps down. (I think - I might have that figure wrong.) The SATA spec is 3Gbps but that's using 8/10 encoding so they're really 300MBps; 6Gbps will similarly be 600MBps.
The net result is that the DMI interface is about the same as four PCI-E 1.x lanes (4 x 250MBps in each direction). A single 6Gbps SATA device could use 60% of that, so two SSDs running at 6Gbps would saturate the link. I suppose Intel could have the PCI-E lanes still run at a theoretical 2.0 spec, but they would never really get that bandwidth in practice. It's why PCI-E 2.0 off a Southbridge has never really made sense IMO.
1. what is manufacture process is the P55 chipset fabbed at?
2. why doesn't AMD use HT to connect the NB and SB, seems very relevant given your reference to saturation potential in the P55?
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henrikfm - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
"We will have results in the upcoming P55 motherboard roundups (three total) starting later this week."Where are those roundups?
jasonbird - Friday, December 25, 2009 - link
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Mastakilla - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link
Hi Anand,Is there any update concerning HD Audio? (bitstreaming for example)
Or do we have to wait a lil longer for that to break through?
Also, do you have any news on the x58A chipset, rumoured in the following topic:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
thanks!
OSJF - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
Did Intel actually commented on USB 3.0 and SATA3 support for the controller hub? Is it planned for ICH11?haze10 - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
does anyone know if it'll be possible to use one of the two peg- slots (the ones provided by the cpu) for an expansion card like e.g. sata III, USB3)? or are these slots for graphics cards only?DanNeely - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
PCIe slots are PCIe slots, you can put whatever you want into them. The catch is that by putting even a 1x card into one of the CPU slots you've dropped the 2nd down to 8x. If you're using a mid-range GPU this shouldn't matter, but the drop in xFire scaling that turned up in a few games on LGA1156 (in particular crysis) indicates that an 8x slot is starting to bottleneck a 4890x2 card; which means that the more affordable forthcoming 5850/5870/g300 cards will also probably suffer.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
It's a pity PCIe lanes can only be allocated in factor of 2 groupings. Being able to split the CPU lanes as 15/1, 12/4, etc would hopefully allow enough BW for even the next generations high end GPUs while also allowing a second device a connection that doesn't get bottlenecked by DMI congestion.
HexiumVII - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I wanted to wait for USB3 and SATA3 b4 upgrading, but that will be a while yet, and not devices plus extremely high early prices makes it a little offputting still. But the current SBs are quite gimped. They can't even support Marvell SATA 6Gbps chips. Only the p7p55d used a workaround with a PEX bridge chip to funnel 4x lanes to the 1x physical supported on the Marvell SATA chip. Oh well, at least even the G2 intel can't do much more than SATA2. We will have to wait for the magic number 3 to get to i/o nirvana.Bakkone - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
Im also waiting for the new SATA and USB to show up. Don't really care if there are devices for it, I just don't want to use expansion cards to get stuff to work.As for chipset, I think its quite obvious that Intel is moving its grey way of doing business from the processor area, to the chipset area.
QChronoD - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Other than Intel's licensing, what is stopping mb mfgrs from just using the ICH10R instead of the P55 and saving $37??DanNeely - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
In addition to what Casper42 has said, can you even buy a ICHR10 by itself, or does intel only sell them with a northbridge chip? I cynically suspect that the very low price of the southbridge is so that intel can pretend to allow 3rd parties to sell a separate SB to pair with an intel NB as an anti-trust gimic while still making doing so sufficiently expensive vs their solution that they've protected their mainstream mobo income stream.Zap - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
That's exactly the first thing I thought of when I read this page.I guess Intel has to protect their chipset business revenues now that they don't have an extra Northbridge to sell.
milleron - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I'd have to answer with a question. Do the Lynnfield CPUs -- i5 750, i7 860, and i7 870 -- require the P55 i.e., are they incompatible with X58/ICH10? Can you build a socket 1156 motherboard without a P55 chipset? I have no idea, but I'll guess that someone here does.
Casper42 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
ICH10R is only a SouthBridge. You need a P45, G41, G43 or G45 Northbridge to go with it to build a complete picture.P55 is a PCH which is a combination of the North and South.
The original author did us all a dis-service by not including the price of the NB just to keep things level.
Core2/P45/ICH10R
Memory Controller: North - Dual Channel DDR2/DDR3
PCIe Lanes: x16=North (16 2.0 lanes), x1=South (6 1.0 lanes)
Core i7/X58/ICH10R
Memory Controller: CPU - Triple Channel DDR3
PCIe Lanes: x16=North (36 2.0 lanes), x1=South (6 1.0 lanes)
Core i5/P55
Memory Controller: CPU - Dual Channel DDR3
PCIe Lanes: x16=CPU (16 2.0 lanes), x1=PCH (8 2.0 crippled lanes)
Common
SATA: South
Audio: South
USB: South
Network: South
Socket 1156, which is what the Core i5 (and that stupidly named Core i7 800 series) all use currently only has 1 Chipset available:
The P55
So to answer your question, NO, you cannot (currently) get a 1156 without a P55.
It does raise a valid question though. If you look at what the ICH10R provides, its damn near identical to what the PCH does, also uses DMI as an interconnect and costs a fraction of the P55.
So it might be technically possible, but someone alot smarter than I must know why it is not being done.
faxon - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link
my understanding was they changed the architecture of the P55 PCH in such a way so as to make it physically impossible to interface the CPU directly to an ICH10R instead, both to protect their chipset business and to prevent manufacturers from breaking the product somehow in the redesign stage such that it looks like it was intel's fault, giving them bad press as a result. ultimately they did design the CPU and the chipset, so if they were made capable of interfacing, but it just didn't work and whoever tried to fix it F*ed up, then joe sixpack out there would blame intel for delivering them a crappy computer as a result. intel also has the H55 chipset in the pipes, which will be designed to interface with the core i3 CPU/GPU MCM by providing video outputs on the board, something P55 lacks as of now. if you think about the price segment that a board which just uses CPU + ICH10R would fall into, it will cut directly into the price segment in which H55 will fall into when it is released. in the end, you would end up with a lot of confused customers and a ton of boards which didnt fall anywhere in intel's marketing lineup either lolyacoub - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Gary - Do you have an ETA for the motherboard articles, particularly the review of the MSI uATX and ATX offerings?I'm guessing the P55 motherboard articles are all complete or nearly complete but will be released over the course of the next few days instead of all at once... just curious how long to wait before we see the MSI reviews since those interest me most.
Thanks :)
Dariak - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
"... We will have results in the upcoming P55 motherboard roundups (three total) starting later this week. "
yacoub - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Thanks - either that line wasn't there earlier or i missed it.Mr Alpha - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Wait, is the DMI 1 gigbyte or 1 gigabit?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
DMI is a 10Gb full duplex link. Somehow a 0 rolled away from us on that. Sorry about that guys, it's fixed.MadMan007 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Something still doesn't add up. I can't work out how 2GB/s as in Intel's slides works out the same as '10Gb/s full duplex.'Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
If it's anything like PCIe, then it would be using 8b/10b encoding. So 10Gb is 1GB, and since it's full duplex 1GB + 1GB = 2GB. At any rate I'm just fixing typos, Gary can tell you more.OSJF - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
Ok, so that would be 250MByte/s, right?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express
"a decent 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID card and a few upcoming 6GB/s drives (SSDs anyone) could easily saturate the link"
?!?
Even a decent 3Gb/s controller could reach 250Mbyte/s.
I'm really confused..... :)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
I believe the DMI link runs at 1GHz, thus you could say it's a "1Gbps" link. However, it's also 16-bits wide, and a byte is 8 bits, so it's "2GBps". Then you have to account for the fact that it's really a full-duplex stream, so it's actually half that bandwidth in each direction -- 1GBps up and 1GBps down. (I think - I might have that figure wrong.) The SATA spec is 3Gbps but that's using 8/10 encoding so they're really 300MBps; 6Gbps will similarly be 600MBps.The net result is that the DMI interface is about the same as four PCI-E 1.x lanes (4 x 250MBps in each direction). A single 6Gbps SATA device could use 60% of that, so two SSDs running at 6Gbps would saturate the link. I suppose Intel could have the PCI-E lanes still run at a theoretical 2.0 spec, but they would never really get that bandwidth in practice. It's why PCI-E 2.0 off a Southbridge has never really made sense IMO.
R3MF - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link
1. what is manufacture process is the P55 chipset fabbed at?2. why doesn't AMD use HT to connect the NB and SB, seems very relevant given your reference to saturation potential in the P55?