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Intel 8-Series Chipsets: Z87 Is Nice

The Core i7-4770K Review: Haswell Is Faster; Desktop Enthusiasts Yawn
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One of the brighter spots of Intel’s desktop Haswell introduction is its 8-series chipsets, including Z87, H87, H81, and B85 Express. Naturally, Z87 Express is the enthusiast-oriented platform controller hub that most of the motherboards we review will employ.

From my Haswell preview:

Eight-series chipsets are going to be physically smaller than their predecessors (23x22 millimeters on the desktop, rather than 27x27) with lower pin-counts. This is largely attributable to more capabilities integrated on the CPU itself. Previously, eight Flexible Display Interface lanes connected the processor and PCH. Although the processor die hosted an embedded DisplayPort controller, the VGA, LVDS, digital display interfaces, and audio were all down on the chipset. Now, the three digital ports are up in the processor, along with the audio and embedded DisplayPort. LVDS is gone altogether, as are six of the FDI lanes.

It turns out that one of the three digital ports is eDP-only with Panel Self-Refresh support, capable of cutting power consumption by putting the on-die GPU in a sleep state between frames. The second port can either be DisplayPort or HDMI, with daisy chaining enabled by DP 1.2 support. If you use a single screen, there’s enough bandwidth to support 4K output at 24 Hz. The third port is for DisplayPort, and that does resolutions of up to 3840x2160 at 60 Hz.

Moving down from the CPU to the less-complex Z87 PCH, we still get eight PCI Express 2.0 lanes for peripherals, along with an integrated gigabit Ethernet MAC and High-Def Audio. Support for Rapid Storage Technology (software-based RAID 1, 5, and 10), Smart Connect Technology (configurable wake from sleep to receive data like email from Outlook), and Rapid Start Technology (fast resume from hibernate) carry over from Z77 also.

The biggest changes are as many as six native USB 3.0 ports and six 6 Gb/s SATA ports, eradicating the four 3 Gb/s ports previously found on 7-series platforms. This is good. Given the proliferation of fast SSDs, we really needed more than two full-speed ports on some of our lab systems. And extra 5 Gb/s USB connectivity is welcome, too.

Should I Worry About My USB Flash Drive?

Prior to Haswell’s introduction, it was rumored that 8-series chipsets had a bug that’d cause USB 3.0-based thumb drives with certain controllers to disconnect when the platform woke from a sleep state. This turned out to be true, though the steps to reproduce actually had more to do with a pulse from the device greater than 400 mV.

Stepping C1 of the chipset is affected. Stepping C2, which should already be shipping, fixes it. Single-chip BGA-based Haswell implementations won’t exhibit the issue, as Intel intervened with updated chipset components on those soldered-down packages.

So far, there are no reports of data loss due to this, so it’s being labeled a nuisance. Our sources say a small number of drives trigger the bug, and if you find one that does, using a different thumb drive should be your solution. At the very worst, you may need to reconnect your device or restart your video player if you watching a movie from the drive when it disconnected. Given the list of scenarios where this errata might surface, and in light of the actions you’d need to take, it’s not worth factoring into a buying decision.

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  • 1 Hide
    phil_livesey , 1 June 2013 16:56
    Yet another competition not open to UK residents, despite this being on the UK site. Thankyou Tomshardware!!!!
  • 0 Hide
    Pailin , 1 June 2013 18:06
    Sounds... disappointing after hearing about the Uber high LN OCs.
    Also thought I recently heard somewhere of others getting Nice 5GHz+ OC's on water and Very low vcore's - perhaps you guys have a Poor batch?
  • 0 Hide
    das_stig , 1 June 2013 19:46
    So once again, the UK site publicises a competition as part of a review and once again, it's limited to the US readers. Come on TH tis just sucks and shows that you don't give a toss about the rest of the world. The internet is a global community, it doesn't stop at the US border. Surely your programming monkies can code a conditional statement to blockout content if outside the U.S of Ass or are they to busy coding up more ad boxes ????
  • 0 Hide
    daglesj , 1 June 2013 21:01
    Guys, you are posting this on the useless and superfluous UK version.
    No one will be reading it.
  • 0 Hide
    mi1ez , 2 June 2013 11:01
    Quote:
    the only arrangement emerging today is the quad-core SoC

    SoC is pushing it a bit given it doesn't contain RAM, USB, network, etc.
  • 0 Hide
    bwrlane , 2 June 2013 14:08
    Great article, but what a let down. Ivy Bridge was already a disappointment, but Haswell is far more disappointing even than that. My 2700k based PC can manage 4.84GHz under full load, while remaining stable. My 3770k PC can do 4.74GHz. The IPC improvements are almost exactly compensated for by the lower attainable clock speed.
    But with Haswell, the world has gone backwards. Apparently, a 4770k can be pushed to 4.4GHz and that's it. That's a 7% reduction in clock speed. Since most benchmarks don't show a 7% improvement at stock, Haswell is slower than the Ivy Bridge that it replaced.
    For years we've been hearing that the answer to all our tech questions is "you have to wait for Haswell for that". But as this article shows, that was a lot of hot air.
  • 0 Hide
    doive1231 , 2 June 2013 19:33
    What a load of baloney we were spun about Haswell graphics. I read it would be a real step change and we should expect something special. Well, the comparisons between HD4000 and HD4600 are a real kick in the teeth. Nothing more that a few frames per second in most tests. Bah, Intel. And not I won't be getting Crystalwell.
  • 0 Hide
    selfmade_exe , 2 June 2013 21:45
    amd trinity gets bottlenecked by 1600 ram!!!
  • 0 Hide
    JRAtk94 , 2 June 2013 23:42
    Yay for AMD.
    Finally, AMD wins on price AND performance.
  • 0 Hide
    selfmade_exe , 3 June 2013 22:22
    TO ALL THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS TEST: I DARE YOU "CLEVER" TESTERS TO TEST AMD TRINITY WITH 1866 RAM OR ABOVE, AND ALSO COMPARE WITH RICHLANT FLAGSHIP. ALSO, PLZ RUN GPU_CAPS_VIEWER -> THE JULIA SET WITH GPU OPENCL AND COMPARE WITH TRINITY! PERIOD!
  • 0 Hide
    Tedfoo25 , 5 June 2013 08:34
    I'm quite impressed actually. With a decent overclock, you are essentially getting a 3930k on the cheap with a socket that will have CPUs developed for it in the future.
  • 0 Hide
    mateau , 11 June 2013 15:22
    Haswell is old tech already. AMD just rekeased FX-9590 a 5 ghz 8 core MONSTER that is sure to stomp all over Hasbeen. And the FX-950 is unlocked for overclocking!!!!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:29
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, THANKS for the usual BIASED review!!
  • -1 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:49
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?
  • 0 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:49
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?
  • -1 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:51
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?