ASUS Ivy Bridge/7-Series Chipset Q&A
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 12, 2012 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Motherboards
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
Intel officially launched the Z77 platform earlier this week, and later this month we'll see the official launch of Ivy Bridge, Intel's 3rd generation Core processors. ASUS has agreed to cart nearly everything it makes (including a handful of unreleased products we saw at CES) over to me in NC for a hands on look on video. More importantly - we're going to be doing a Q&A with you all.
ASUS and I will both be answering your questions on camera. If you have any questions you'd like to see us answer or topics you'd like us to address, respond to the comments here or mention @anandtech with the hashtag #asusivy on Twitter along with your question/topic. We won't be able to get to all of them but we'll pick the most interesting/relevant questions and answer them on camera. The topic is obviously going to be Ivy Bridge and the 7-series platform. Simple questions are fine but what I'd really like to see are topics we can have a good discussion about.
When the video goes live, ASUS is also going to let us give away some new Z77 boards as well. We'll have more details on the giveaway closer to the Ivy Bridge launch.
Make the questions good and I look forward to answering them on camera.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
170 Comments
View All Comments
casteve - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I'd like to see a discussion on best ways to deal with the idle power hit we take when using 2 monitors and a discrete gaming card. Impact of using Virtu MVP modes, etc...dmarkham421 - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
Digi+ VRM is marketed as improving system stability especially when overclocking. Your higher-end motherboards have more Digi+ VRM phases. For a system that will be overclocked 24/7, is there a minimum number of phases you would recommend for a stable overclocked system?HaydenOscar - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I'm a lover of mITX gaming machines... But the current line up up mITX boards have the socket right next to the PCIe slot, which makes it hard to buy a heatsink that won't hit the graphics card.The Asus Z77-I Deluxe has been shown off and it has the chipset in between the socket and the PCIe slot, which is good. But will other mITX boards be like this, or will I be forced to buy the top of the range mITX board just so I can use my PCIe slot with an aftermarket cooler?
LStoops - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
I agree. Asus makes excellent equipment but often there's no way to get that quality in a more affordable motherboard. Is there any plan to offer Asus quality in products with fewer features and less price?Gary Key - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
ASUS Response -Our current micro-ITX lineup for Z77 only consists of the P877-I Deluxe. While the board has numerous features usually reserved for our Deluxe ATX board, the pricing on it will be competitive for the feature set. At this time we do not plan on another micro-ITX design at launch but we are investigating a Pro version of the board depending upon the success of the Deluxe.
ImSpartacus - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
What kind of microATX motherboards will be offered by ASUS and how will they be different from similarly priced ATX motherboards from ASUS?dmarkham421 - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
Some early rumors indicate that Ivy Bridge processors run hotter and have less headroom for overclocks compared to Sandy Bridge, with the exception of using LN2. In your experience, how overclockable is Ivy Bridge compared Sandy Bridge.Gary Key - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
ASUS Response -1. If you are using a high quality air cooler or a self contained water cooler like the Corsair H100 or Antec 920, the current ES E1 stepping (retail release) is hitting 4.6~4.9GHz on average. This is at 1.325~1.35V (CPU VID) and that is the recommended maximum voltage with this type of cooling. We are basing this on using a program like Prime 95 or Linpack for stress testing, although I actually recommend not using either in this situation for very long due to temperature loads (easily see 95C~102C) and to be honest these programs do not provide a true measure of system stability.
With a multitask benchmark that still loads all cores but also performs heavy stress testing on the memory, storage and GPU subsystems we are seeing a 4.8GHz average with a couple of processors hitting 5GHz at 1.325V for CPU VID. In gaming, hitting 4.8~5GHz on average with CPU VID around 1.3V, although raising VID for additional core clock speeds still places us around 5.1GHz on average before hitting the temperature wall.
2. As with Sandy Bridge, we expect the retail stepping to clock slightly better than the ES samples but as always your mileage will vary. However, based on current SB 2500K~2700K processors averaging 5~5.2GHz with several lots hitting 5.4GHz or even higher with the gems, IVB will take a slight step backwards for the air/water cooling crowd. Hopefully this improves over time as the process matures but right now expect 4.8GHz or so at launch for an average processor and fingers crossed the better retail processors will hit 5Ghz with like settings.
3. For the phase/ln2 crowd, IVB will be a dream come true again on the Intel side with benchable processors hitting 6.4~7GHz depending on the benchmark utilized.
repoman27 - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
Asus has been a leader in offering UASP drivers, but determining whether a controller/device combination can take advantage of this mode is still a bit murky. Is there a matrix for determining which combinations of host controllers and device silicon are UASP capable?What factors determine which transfer mode is selected under USB 3.0 Boost?
How much of an advantage does USB 3.0 Boost really provide with popular storage devices, and how much longer is it before we can expect native Windows support for UASP?
repoman27 - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
Also, integrated USB 3.0 is a major feature of Panther Point, however many Ivy Bridge platforms will also include additional USB 3.0 hub and third-party host controller chips to offer more than 4 SuperSpeed ports. How much of a performance difference are we going to see depending on which port we plug a device into?