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  • ComputerGuy2006 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    I like how both the ASUS P8Z77 WS and the ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe have dual NIC. But without a hex core to go with these mobo's look like I am going to be stuck with my slow 1336 till ivy bridge-e....
  • johnpombrio - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    Take a look at Anand's review of Ivy Bridge. He uses the SB- E as part of the benchmarking. It turns out that having those 6/12 cores and the extra cache did not make these expensive chips run most stuff any faster than the much less expensive IB. That decided me right there to upgrade to IB rather than to the SB -E chips. So Ivy Bridge with a Z77 chipset is the way to go unless you are doing some serious stuff with transcoding or double or triple SLI..
  • euler007 - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    But people on the internets will have more cores than him!
  • lunarx3dfx - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    My 1366 920 is still hanging in there pretty good, and I was waiting on SB-E to upgrade, but I'm with John. The performance upgrade wasn't significant enough to justify the cost, so it looks like it'll be IB for me. Who cares about 6 or more cores if there isn't a huge performance gain?
  • aguilpa1 - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    I'm in the same boat, Don't let Intel know but there is usually one GRAND chip that can hold its own against several generations of mediocre chips before an upgrade is needed. The i7 920 when OC'ed is one and the Q6600 was the one before that. I had both and now I'm on the 920 and there doesn't seem to be a good reason to upgrade until IB.
  • Samus - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link

    I've had an Asus x58 chipset board with a i7-950 for over 3 years, I have upgraded nothing. It is still faster than 90% of the computers on the market, and within 20% of the performance of mainstream Sandy/Ivy Bridge chips.

    There is no compelling reason to upgrade to Socket 1155 from Socket 1366. I agree with john and lunar in waiting for the next socket/architecture.

    Intel really outdid themselves with Bloomfield.
  • adece - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    Unless Gygabyte or ASRock puts WiFi on a sub $220 Mobo of their's, my money is going to Asus.
  • deltatux - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    It would have been nice if ASUS or GIGABYTE would put at least one or two PCI slots. There are still a lot of sound cards and TV tuners that are mainly PCI.

    It would definitely suck if I am forced to upgrade my sound card which works perfectly just because new motherboards force users to upgrade even though the majority is still on the older tech.

    Don't get me wrong, PCI is long overdue to get replaced but honestly, there's still too many of these expansion cards which are still reliant on the older PCI bus.
  • Concillian - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    Several Z68 / P67 mobos have PCI slots, will support IB, and should be available for a while.

    The Z77 chipset has no PCI outputs. It's a little unfair to blame the motherboard makers for not including a feature that is not in the base chipset. It can't be simple to just slap a PCI slot on a mobo with a chipset that is designed not to use them.
  • DanNeely - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    Theoretically they could use a PCIe-PCI bridge chip to add a legacy slot; but the cost of doing so (to include the engineering work to integrate it) would probably exceed that of buying a higher end chip from Intel.
  • yuhong - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    The Z68/P67/H67/H61 chipsets don't have them either.. All the MBs with PCI slots had to use a bridge chip to add them.
  • moozoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    >There are still a lot of sound cards and TV tuners that are mainly PCI.

    Looking at http://www.netplus.com.au/product-list/SO40/Sound_... where I buy my gear. They are "mainly" pci-e

    Seriously buy a new sound card.
    There a plenty of good PCI-e sound cards from cheap though to expensive.

    I'd imagine most motherboards are bought for new systems and people buying new systems who want a sound card are going to want a pci-e one.
    That and the fact that motherboard sound is good enough for 90% of the market is why the manufacturers are dropping PCI.

    PCI can not die soon enough.

    I just wish that Intel had a Ivy Bridge that has the GPU and twice the PCI-e lanes.
  • Wardrop - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    I say death to PCI. It's about time PCI became a non-standard feature. It's only been super-ceded for 8 years. I've personally consciously avoided all PCI add-on cards for the last 5-6 years; sometimes these PCI-e cards would cost more or be harder to source than their PCI equivalent, but I was guaranteeing future compatibility (and ensuring I had no bandwidth bottlenecks). I'm now glad that every add-on card in our house is PCI-e, except for my second TV tuner which is only PCI because the damn motherboard only had 2 PCI-e slots (already used by the GPU and the primary TV tuner) - which is exactly why I'm glad PCI is finally being dropped.
  • oldabelincoln - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    The sound card I understand. A TV tuner on PCI I don't understand. Before even the change to broadcast ATSC, tuner cards were PCI-e, at least the ones I looked at that supported ATSC, and with cable cos going to all digital output, I wonder what tuner you are using and what kind of signal you re recording. I'm not disputing the issue, just a bit puzzled.

    For my part, I use a PCI-e Hayppauge 2250, and certainly wouldn't have minded if it was PCI, so I could free up two PCI-e slots that the 2250 and daughter board use up, and get some use out of the unused PCI space.
  • LoneWolf15 - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    @oldabelincoln:
    What does PCI vs PCIe have to do with whether a tuner is analog or digital? There are PCI cards with digital tuners too; Hauppauge's HVR-1150 is an example.

    @the earlier poster:
    Having said that, the price of being an enthusiast, or at least being one who upgrades to newer high-end platforms, some legacy support will eventually die. I transitioned to a PCIe sound card and a PCIe tuner card knowing I wouldn't always have support for PCI cards. There are a few very specific cards out there that are still PCI only, but usually they are such that and end-user isn't likely to change the configuration of a system using them. Good sound cards and TV tuners are available in PCIe, and are reasonably priced when compared to a $200-350 Z77 mainboard.
  • Belard - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    That is the thing, intel wants ALL legacy ports off the boards. It lowers costs, lowers point of failure, makes things easier.

    PCI has done well, it can go now. Ouch... I think I just realized my Tuner-card is PCI, nope... its PCIe. I'm good to go.

    For those who need PCI support, they can go with AMD boards, for now...
  • philosofool - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    I'm a little confused by this comment, because it looks to me as if GIGABYTE has some (but not all) boards including some legacy PCI.

    I get what you're saying about wanting them on your board. If you have an old but good sound card, an upgrade is expensive and probably doesn't add to your overall experience. It's just a part you had to replace.

    I use a PCI 802.11g card that I absolutely love. I never have connectivity failures that require a reboot of my system. You can't say that for all wireless cards, and I'm not looking forward to the point where I have to replace this one.
  • Logsdonb - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    I would like to see some ivy bridge / PCI 3 benchmarks with crossfire configurations (ATI 7870s) and high speed SSDs. Most benchmarks published so far only have 1 GPU and don't really show the capability of the new PCI graphics. I am really looking forward to upgrading with CPU, GPU, and PCI upgrades all at the same time.

    I would like to see very nice gaming / photo and video editing solutions without having to create a massive space heater that is loud and consumes massive amounts of energy to run. In other words, a nice machine that is also nice to live with.
  • ravisurdhar - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    The sudden appearance of mSATA everywhere kinda surprised me...is this supposed to be used for an SRT drive, for users that don't want a full-sized SSD?
  • peterfares - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    That and for small form-factor PCs. With a tiny SSD that plugs right into the motherboard it basically takes up no room. This will also be great for HTPCs, too. If you don't need local storage, a small SSD is awesome.
  • fatpenguin - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    I was very excited to find that Ivy Bridge is supposed to support up to 3 Display Port outputs natively, since it would eliminate any need for an external graphics card (for me personally). Have you seen any vendors offer this on any current 7-series motherboards?
  • IlllI - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    you guys should do some review with m-itx motherboards.
  • Knifeshade - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    I think this is one of the most interesting boards to come out of CeBIT '12. For people who don't need so much expansion slots, they're moving to smaller platforms and this mini ITX board really feels like it's got everything its older siblings have but in a much smaller package. I hope you guys can get one in to have a look over.
  • James5mith - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link

    Why aren't more companies putting out products with displayport? It's a great interface, and both Dell and HP have adapted to it wholeheartedly. I personally can't wait until the industry gives up VGA and DVi in favor of it.
  • lbeyak - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    High end Z77 boards. I like the look of most of the Asus boards (especially the Sabertooth, 5 year warranty /drools).

    Reviews on boards with dual NICs would be nice as well.

    Integrated Wi-Fi / Bluetooth is interesting to me as well, and I like that they are included on some boards.
  • Jumpman23 - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    Why can't all the usb ports be of the 3.0 flavor? Is it a cost issue? I would assume that usb ports are a fairly small portion of the overall cost for these manufacturers so why not make them all 3.0?
  • IanCutress - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    Primarily, it is cost - Z77 gets a couple of USB 3.0 from the chipset, then the rest is controllers. Each controller comes at a cost (I don't know how much, but with markup, probably $5 a piece perhaps[?]), which then gets passed on.

    Personally, I like to have two or three USB 2.0. When I install an OS for a review, it's via a USB stick - the install package doesn't have a USB 3.0 driver installed, so it can't detect itself when it is loaded (or won't detect my mouse or keyboard). Odd I know, but it means I have to dig out an OS disk if a board goes for solely USB 3.0.
  • repoman27 - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    There are plenty of USB devices (most of the ones in currently in existence, actually) that will never benefit from USB 3.0's additional capabilities. While I agree that it would be simpler for the end user if all the ports were the same, the 7-series chipsets provide 4x USB 3.0 ports and 10x USB 2.0. Since you get the 2.0 ports for free, why not use them?

    I actually believe it's more of a bandwidth problem than a straight cost issue for Ivy Bridge. (I was under the impression that the Renesas μPD720201 4-port controllers only run about $3 these days.) However, if you were to make all 6 of the SATA ports 6 Gbps and all 14 of the USB ports SuperSpeed on a 7-series motherboard, you'd be adding an additional ~26 Gbps of potential I/O to a southbridge that's only got a 20 Gbps DMI connecting it to the CPU.
  • Dr. Mobius - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    I would really like to see EVGA's line up.
  • Breach1337 - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    Great, I personally would love to get the Asus Z77 Sabertooth, but I'm still confused by these PCIe specs? AFAIK, IB has only 16 PCI-E lanes (although they are 3.0 lanes). So if the boards say:

    2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8) *2
    1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black) *3
    3 x PCIe 2.0 x1

    And I have two PCIe 3.0 cards running x8 SLI where would the extra lanes come for the rest of the stuff - all these PCIe 2.0 slots? Say, if I plug in a 3rd card - my Creative PCI-e 2.0 x1 card would that hurt the 2 x8 SLI's performance?
  • Meaker10 - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    They come from the south bridge.
  • danjw - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    I would like to see reviews for the ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe and ASRock Z77 Pro4.
  • tyrant.otter - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link

    I'd really like to see a review of that ASUS Maximus V Gene. It looks like it would be an excellent replacement for my aging MSI x58m. I wonder though is there any advantage to using an SSD in the 'augmentation port' when I already have an SSD as the OS drive? I'm guessing any advantage would have to come from using PCIe instead of SATA.
  • st.bone - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    I would like to see Intel Desktop Boards, especially Intel DZ77RE the one that allegedly comes with thunderbolt, I live Intel Desktop Boards made by Intel, so i normally buy Intel boards not third party like the ones on the review, i find Intel boards stable and appealing than most of other venders, at list to me, simplicity is what i like about the boards
  • risa2000 - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    I am there with you. It would be good to have also Intel original boards on the list. I have been running many boards in the past (Gigabyte, ABit, ASUS), but since I moved to Intel boards (D975XBX, DH55HC recently) I feel like I found finally sweet spot.

    The main factor about Intel boards for me is usually integrated Intel NIC, decent sound, and conservative design.
  • st.bone - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    Thanks, it's nice to know there are others who appreciate.

    I have used various Motherboards in the past too (A SRock, ECS, Gigabyte, Mercury, ASUS, just but to mention a few)

    But ever since i moved to Intel Desktop Boards I've felt happier at home with them, my first Intel Desktop Board was D945GCCR, then Moved Shortly to D945GCNL, then a long line of others like DG33BU, DG35EC, DG43GT and currently on DH55HC.

    My Current setup is:

    Intel Desktop Board DH55HC
    Intel Processor Core i5 - 760
    Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600Mhz kit 4 x 4GB
    1TB WD
    POV TGT Charged Nvidia GTX 460 1GB
    Inwin F430 Black Chassis
    FSP Everest PSU 600 Watts
    LG DVD-WR
    Display : Dell SX2210 22inch/21.5 visible area 1920 x 1080 Res
    Dell Keyboard
    Logitech M215 Wireless Mouse
    Sony Headphones
    Speakers Logitech Z906 5.1

    I would like to upgrade three major components come april
    1: Change Desktop Board to DZ77RE
    2; Change Processor to Core i7 3770K, Core i7 3770
    3: Change Graphics Card to AMD Radeon or Nvidia GeForce @ around $300 to 350 Max

    Please Anand do a review for the above components...
  • dzlboats - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    The deluxe version of P8Z77-V series has the best layout with extra usb ports and PCI slots removed for those that don't need PCI capability. My choice if offered would be a P8Z77-V(lite) without the 5.25 USB 3.0 panel and WiFi module since my Lancool PC-K9WX case has USB 3.0 ports built in and I don't have an immediate need for WiFi. The cost would be significantly lower also.
  • orenlevy - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    this is huge different from H77 to Z77 ddr 1600 vs ddr 2400+ Oc2800
  • ol1bit - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link

    All I use my PC for anymore that need power is Games, and 80% of that is GFX... My I7 seems set for another 5 years of life, just like my e6600 did before.

    I think everyone is going to tablets/ smart phones etc.
  • gentlearc - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    *grammar*
  • mbf - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    Is ECC support on the P8Z77 WS confirmed? Last generation ECC for Sandy Bridge-based (Xeon) processors was only introduced with the P8B WS, which uses the C206 chipset, and not, for instance, the P8P67 WS Revolution, which uses the P67 chipset.

    ASUS itself doesn't say one way or the other (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155...

    Don't get me wrong. I'd _really_ love ECC support on the P8Z77 WS, but somehow I doubt it.
  • ven - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    at least this time intel didn't do any crazy things like limiting the IGP access to selected chipset (P67,they purposely removed that feature just because for that lucid Logix virtu thing(Z68), I think it doesn't create any difference most of them used the discrete graphics card as the primary graphics engine.completely useless feature)

    one thing i hate with 7 series is still it is supporting only 2 SATA-III port, those marvell and asmedia ports performance are no match for the intel.

    Still no hint of thunderbolt,maybe waiting for haswell.
  • st.bone - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    Oh Thunderbolt is here.... Check this out:
    Thunderbolt Port Pictured on MSI Z77A-GD80
    http://www.techpowerup.com/161912/Thunderbolt-Port...
  • ven - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    is it native to Z77? then why didn't all motherboards has this feature?
  • mmaestro - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    Would love to see some stuff on the H77 boards. SRT on an entry-level board should give some great idiot-proof performance boosting for the folks who just need a basic system to deal with media, web browsing, email, and office apps.
  • MobiusStrip - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link

    Wasn't Thunderbolt supposed to be on-board finally?
  • mbf - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link

    No, USB3 is finally on-board. Thunderbolt is just no longer an "Apple Exclusive". Apart from that, the Thunderbolt chip costs a pretty penny as well.
  • Arbie - Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - link

    I hope you'll review the Asus Sabertooth Z77 board, with some emphasis on its thermal armor and fan control suite.

    Reviews of the board's predecessors have either left the thermal armor with no fan, or have installed the fan backwards. Asus evidently provides no guidance on this, and may not even include the fan. As a result, there have been no good reviews of what the armor achieves.

    The design of the armor shows that an exhaust fan is expected. This will pull warm air out of the covered areas and dump it into the space above the fan port (between CPU cooler and graphics board etc). This should help the protected motherboard components run cooler. However, there remain questions of physical interference between the fan and the card slots, especially the 1x slot nearest the fan port. Also, what fan size is required, and is there a best choice for this?

    I'd also like to know what thermal sensors are supported by the mobo and its BIOS, how many PWM headers there are and what they control on, and any other details that will help plan a build.

    Asus stands out in its support for air cooling of an overclocked rig in a real-world PC case, and I think that what they offer should be evaluated for its benefits. Reviewers too often shortcut or simply ignore such provisions because they are testing on an open chassis. So most manufacturers feel free to shortcut the issues as well. But consumers buying the boards will be using them very differently, and case cooling is VERY important.

    Far less important to me are extra slots and PLX-type chips for SLI graphics boards. Given the glacial improvements in PC games, a single board is all I need or want. Given the practical drawbacks, I'd bet that only a small fraction of enthusiasts (which is already a very small group) actually run two boards.

    Thanks
  • colonelclaw - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link

    It's a bit annoying that none of these chip-sets supports 8 RAM slots, but then I guess that would be cannibalising the more expensive kit. As someone who works in 3D graphics for a living it makes me slightly wince to see that Asus board labeled 'Workstation' with just 4 RAM slots. Intel sure likes to squeeze as much money out of us as they can now that they make the undisputed best processors, not that I can blame them for doing so, after all they're not a charity.
    Are there any chips that have more than 4 cores/8 threads that you can put in any of these boards? It's funny, 4 cores seemed like like so much just a few years ago, nowadays it feels like the bare minimum acceptable.
  • coachingjoy - Sunday, March 18, 2012 - link

    Any mITX goodness available?

    Thanks.
  • shatteredx - Monday, March 19, 2012 - link

    Lovin to see wifi on the asus boards. That's a bigger selling point for me than dual nics. Actually, can someone explain to me why you would want dual nics?
  • tkafafi - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link

    Why do the new intel chipsets (series 7) still contain so many (10) usb2 ports ? Would any PC/laptop manufacturer chose to use a usb2 port instead of anavailable usb3 port from the chipset ? for e.g would they use 2 usb2 + 2usb3 instead of 4 usb3 from the chipset ?

    I know PC manufacturers are using this configuration (2 usb2 + 2 usb3) because now they need to support usb3 through an external controller so they are saving cost by using a 2 port controller. But once series 7 chipsets arrive with native usb3 support, there would be no cost advantage to do this. Is this to derisk any interoperability issues with older usb2 devices (i.e if for some reason usb3 ports don't work well with some existing usb2 devices) ?

    Thanks
  • ajeto - Saturday, May 26, 2012 - link

    Does any of you guys (or girls) know what is the maximum resolution you can get when you use two displays on integrated graphic ASUS P8Z77-V LE?

    I'm planning to use one 30" and one 24"
    I know that max 2560x1600 can only be achieved via DisplayPort so i was planning to get an Active DisplayPort to DVI-D converter...

    Do you think it would work to get 2560x1600 and 1900x1200 simultaneously on my displays?

    Thank you for any kind of info
  • ajeto - Sunday, May 27, 2012 - link

    Yes multiple displays are working (two at least, that i've tried), BUT i only get max 1280x800 on 30" via DVI. This should be 1900x1200 as stated in specifications.

    The other (24") display is working at correct 1900x1200 (via HDMI)

    Oh yeah, I forgot to mention i am using i5 3570K
  • ajeto - Sunday, May 27, 2012 - link

    Funny that it works fine on two 24" @ 1900x1200, but if i use 30" i can only get 1280x800 as max on 30" and 1900x1200 on 24"

    I also tested this and it works:
    30" on 8600GT @2560x1600
    24" on integrated @ 1900x1200 (HDMI)
    and even additional (which i connected just for testing purpose and i wont be using it)
    24" on integrated @1900x1200 (DVI or VGA)

    but the thing is i would really like to get rid of 8600GT and use just integrated graphics (no need for 3D accel) so that's why i wanted to buy Dell-BizLink-DisplayPort-Adapter-Powered to use DisplayPort on MoBo.

    But since i only get 1280x800 from DVI to my 30" i'm kinda afraid it might not work even with DisplayPort ... :(

    Any ideas/solutions greatly appreciated..

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