The Intel W480 Motherboard Overview: LGA1200 For Xeon W-1200
by Gavin Bonshor on June 24, 2020 9:00 AM ESTGIGABYTE W480 Vision W
Moving down GIGABYTE's W480 product stack is the W480 Vision W, which is similar in feature set to the W480 Vision D bar some of the most premium features. Included in the W480 Vision W feature set is a pair of PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, eight SATA ports, with two Ethernet ports including a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet controller pairing and a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec.
Although the GIGABYTE W480 Vision W isn't as visually appealing as the more premium Vision D, the W still looks good with a very busy PCB full of components and circuitry around the PCIe slot area. Included are four full-length PCIe 3.0 slots, with two of them featuring a metal slot reinforcement coating. The two metal-coated slots operate at PCIe 3.0 x16 and PCIe 3.0 x8, while the remaining two are locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4, although the second of these x4 slots share bandwidth with second PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot. There is a total of eight SATA ports, with six from the chipset that includes support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays, while an ASMedia SATA controller drives the other two ports in orange.
On the rear panel, the W480 Vision W includes a single USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, three USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports. Included is a pair of RJ45 ports, one controlled by an Intel 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller, and the other by an Intel Gigabit controller, although GIGABYTE hasn't specified the actual controllers used. Powering the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output is a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec, while a pair of video outputs including a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 1.4 allow users to use integrated graphics on supported processors. Finishing off the rear panel is a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port.
The GIGABYTE W480 Vision W is a solid offering with support for both ECC and non-ECC memory, a 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller, and a premium ALC1220-VB audio codec. At present GIGABYTE hasn't unveiled pricing for any of its W480 models, but we expect the W480 Vision W to come in cheaper than the higher-grade W480 Vision D.
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YB1064 - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
Underwhelming at best. Why would anybody go for this over EPYC?Jorgp2 - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
Lolextide - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
This doesn't even compete with Threadripper, much less Epyc. This chipset allows you to use LGA1200 Xeons which are identical to the 10th gen Core series plus ECC support -- which is essentially what you get with regular Ryzen line -- except the regular ryzen line goes to 16 cores and ECC is only "semi official"foobaz - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
The Xeon has one minor advantage over Ryzen - the Xeon does both ECC and integrated graphics. Ryzen APUs can't do ECC, so if you want ECC, you need to pair a Ryzen without integrated graphics with either a discrete GPU or a motherboard with onboard graphics like the X470D4U.PixyMisa - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
For a server though, you want BMC, so you want a motherboard like the X470D4U.And for a workstation, in most cases you want discrete graphics.
abeetz - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
For one, the W480 Vision W from Gigabyte includes AMT, as far as I can tell. Some are selling it as a workstation board, and the W-1370 / 1370P CPUs are positioned as workstation processors. But I don't see any downside to using this as a pretty beefy server. It does have a fancy audio section, but that in itself shouldn't disqualify server use. Happy to get anyone else's take on this here. Saying this, of course, because I was able to get a hold of that motherboard + W-1370P CPU, both currently rare, and am considering them as a server for a small business whose network I run.abeetz - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
Correction - I meant that some are selling it as a SERVER board...0ldman79 - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
When you're talking servers the dinky GPU doesn't factor in.The price difference between the Intel and AMD line they can more than afford to toss in any motherboard-integrated GPU they can think of.
I'd say 99% of the time the server GPU is only used during initial setup and config. Everything is remote managed.
I even go so far as to disconnect the mouse, keyboard and monitor on almost every server I set up. Keeps the business owner's kids from screwing with it.
The iGPU is not a deciding factor in a server purchase.
eek2121 - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
I don’t know about that. Ryzen chips can do ECC, I actually haven’t looked at whether the APUs have a different memory controller, but all Ryzen chips support ECC. My X570 board let’s me enable it via the BIOS (F20a, AMD CBS menu).Slash3 - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Pro series APUs do support ECC, but non-Pro APUs do not.