Intel's Skylake chipsets will reportedly feature upgraded PCIe

Scorpus

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One feature of Intel's chipsets that hasn't changed much over the past few years, even for the enthusiast X-series chips, is the amount and speed of the PCI Express lanes provided. Most chipsets, including the latest Z97 and X99 models, include just eight PCIe lanes each limited to Gen2 speeds.

Leaked slides obtained by VR-Zone show Intel's next-generation 100 Series chipsets, set for launch alongside Skylake CPUs, getting a pretty significant PCIe connectivity upgrade. The high-end Z170, for example, will come with 20 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, an effective quadrupling of available bandwidth from the chipset.

intel skylake pcie pci express chipset z170

All other chipsets, except the H110 with six PCIe 2.0 lanes, will receive a PCIe 3.0 connectivity upgrade. Many of the models will receive a USB connectivity boost as well, such as the Z170 that will support ten USB 3.0 ports (up from six in the Z97) out of 14 total USB ports.

These connectivity upgrades, especially on the PCIe front, are geared towards supporting more high-speed storage devices such as M.2 and SATA Express solid state drives. On the Z170 chipset, Intel Rapid Storage Technology will support up to three M.2 or SATA Express drives, up from just one on the Z97.

The PCIe upgrades to the chipset are not to be confused with the PCIe lanes available from the CPU itself. Intel's latest LGA1150 CPUs support 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and this likely won't change with Skylake. However when combined with the lanes from the chipset, you'll now have 36 in total, up from 24 with the previous generation.

Skylake, and presumably the accompanying 100 series chipsets, are expected to launch mid-year according to the latest Intel roadmap.

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I was wondering when they were going to address this.

This was a major handicap on the Haswell E platform.
 
This is great news. I wondered about PCH to CPU transfers and the Z170 platform diagram shows DMI x4! Also, with Skylake the FVIR (Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator) will not be there, but dual IMC will be introduced. This part is interesting. Is Intel removing features that would have improved overclocking greatly vs current gen Core chips (of course that depends on yields, choice and design), but then negating that with the convenience of supporting two memory types?

The IPC are supposed to get a boost and that is always a good thing. I'm really excited about this upgrade.

More info:
http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-s...d-z170-100series-chipset-replace-z97-2h-2015/
 
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In the meantime both Apple and Intel sunk their heads into sand on the count of Thunderbolt 3 which they promised a while ago.
 
In the meantime both Apple and Intel sunk their heads into sand on the count of Thunderbolt 3 which they promised a while ago.
Thunderbolt originally died when Intel licensed it exclusively to Apple. Now, with USB 3.1 around the corner, no one wants to deal with it.
 
Thunderbolt originally died when Intel licensed it exclusively to Apple. Now, with USB 3.1 around the corner, no one wants to deal with it.
Well, TB3 is x4 faster than USB 3.1, so it's not a real competition. Plus, TB3 will be compatible with DisplayPort 1.3, which is great.
 
Well, TB3 is x4 faster than USB 3.1, so it's not a real competition. Plus, TB3 will be compatible with DisplayPort 1.3, which is great.
None of that matters, if motherboard manufactures and device makers don't support the technology. USB is supported by pretty much everyone, whereas I very rarely see Thunderbolt or regular DisplayPort anywhere.
 
None of that matters, if motherboard manufactures and device makers don't support the technology. USB is supported by pretty much everyone, whereas I very rarely see Thunderbolt or regular DisplayPort anywhere.

Thunderbolt throughput absolutely matters in industries like digital pro-audio where low latency between your audio interface and computer is extremely important.

Just because it doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it's unimportant to others.
 
Those specs look quite fancy. I wonder if my nForce 2 chipset sports similar specs... ;)
Only trouble with nForce chipset is that they died if they were overclocked. Not sure which pc magazine this was from but I remember reading that out of the 9 pc's the people in the office owned with nforce only 1 of them was still working and that was the only one that had not been overclocked.
 
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