Not until Skylake-E, probably a year later, and probably using an ~2000 pin socket. The mainstream CPUs still top out at 4/8 because mass market software very rarely needs more than that, more cores results in less power/core and slower single threaded performance, and bigger dies are more expensive as well. (Which is also part of why the E CPUs don't have an IGP.)
more cores doesn't necessary result in less single threaded performance, look at any of the intel extreme editions multicores ever... obviously it's more expensive, but there's no way in hell intel couldn't find a profitable way to make 6 core mainstream, they choose not to...
At a given power level it does. The 130W extreme CPUs need stronger power delivery hardware and thicker power traces on the mobo. If they ran on the same socket as the mainstream parts, it would require the mainstream boards to be overbuilt so they could run the extreme CPUs driving up costs.
Socket 1150x motherboards are all designed to support a 95W processor. Recent Haswell and the coming Broadwell/Sky Lake chips are using far less than what the socket specs are rated for. This head room could be used to provide a 6 core chip without breaking the 95W barrier.
Skylake adds an additional 4 pci-e lanes from the cpu so it now has 20 lanes instead of 16. This would allow the extreme 7 motherboard to have 3x ultra m2 slots using 12 lanes be all populated and still leave 8x lanes for a single gpu which has no impact on gaming performance compared to running at 16 lanes.
This is really really awesome news. I was hoping that with skylake-e there would be at least 2 ultra m2 slots on the board as I need 1TB of ssd space at the bare minimum but 3 slots would be even better 3x 512GB sm951 ssd's for 1.5TB of super fast storage. With 40 lanes available on skylake-e thats the GPU on full 16x and 12x for ssd's so even the gimped 28 lane cpu on the E platform could do that well.
Man my skylake-e build is gonna be so epic and such a huge upgrade over my i7-980x.
And there lots of cool stuff you can do with your build when you don't need any 5.25" drives or any 3.5" drives or even any 2.5" drives. Can pull out a lot of drive sleds and free up a ton of space to do some crazy water cooling with big fat thick radiators. Or you can take it the other way with the extreme platform having mini-itx boards now that use so-dimms to keep quad channel available and make an incredible powerful tiny build where the only hardware inside the case is power supply, fans, wires, and motherboard with storage and gpu and everything else right on mobo. Need very little room to pull that off.
Same here. Patiently waiting for Skylake-E. I have a Core i7-920. 32" 4k monitors should be much more affordable by then. Would be nice to also have a completely wireless PC - no more audio/video/etc cable connections.
Good luck with that. My 920 died a month ago. My 930's still running; but I built a 4790 since i didn't want to be forced into a panic upgrade if the other one went too. Even if I waited a year there'd still be something major sitting on the horizon; probably USB 3.1 in the chipset; given Intel's lack of major changes in tock chipsets; probably not for another two years with the 300 series.
Dropped a X5670 (six core Xeon) as a replacement to my 920 (glad a BIOS update allowed for it). 30 Watts less power for nearly twice as much processing power. Bought it used for $100, since I didn't feel the new build cost was worth it. Maybe this will justify shelling out some cash. I've been wanting a to build a new workstation for quite a while. The micro-atx builds just aren't as fun.
For the last year or so, the rumors seem to've settled on still only having 16 PCIe lanes on the CPU; but that the chipset would have up to 20. The latter's a bit of deceptive though; similar to how the 8x/9x series chipsets had 18 flexible io ports that could be shared among PCIe/USB3/Sata the 1xx chipset will have 28 flexible io ports to share among all three; so unless you skip heavily on sata/usb3 you won't actually have the max 20 available on the chipset; and unless a lot of USB3 hubs/PLX/sata controller chips are used you won't be able to populate all of the PCIe/M2/Sata express connectors at once.
People've been saying some version of "but what if 8 lanes won't be be enough for new GPUs" with every generation of boards that've launched. Outside of occasional edge cases it's never been a problem in the real world.
When it becomes a problem, PCIe 4.0 will happen, or CPUs will come with more lanes. Skylake is bumping up to 20 lanes for a reason. Need pushes features.
Actually it's my understanding that Skylake-S's connection to the "Sunrise Point" PCH has the 20 lanes, up from 8x PCIe 2.0. Skylake itself still has x16 CPU PCIe AFAICT.
That's not correct. The CPU still only has 16 lanes, but the chipset now has up to 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes instead of 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes. Keep in mind though that the total number of lanes (USB3+PCIe+SATA) off the chipset is limited to 28, so using all of those lanes at one usually means sacrificing something else.
I wouldn't expect Wikipedia to give accurate information about products that haven't been released yet, but I suppose given that all information is uncertain. I'm basing my information on leaked spec sheets which detail the full range of available port configurations on the PCH:
The chart there also mentions Intel RST will support up to 3 M.2 slots, which would explain the 3 M.2 on the Extreme7, and also mean these M.2 would not interfere with e.g. 8/8 or 8/4/4 GPU connection (4/4/4/4 would be possible too but one 16x slot here is only single-width, alas)
Do not forget that Samsung now has stacked NAND. Another year or two, and they will be stacking NAND higher than a fat mans pancakes. And those little M.2 cards are going to explode in capacity, I can easily envision a 10TB M.2 card. How many of those would one need? In 10 years, if the demand is there, we could have some future version of M.2 that could have just incredible amounts of storage that is persistent. It might not be stacked NAND, but it will appear to us humans to function the same way.
Many of us have read that the FIVR (power management hardware) which only recently was placed directly onto the CPU package by Intel, is going to move back to the motherboard with Skylake. Now I sit here and wonder why Intel would integrate the power on-die, and then despite the fact that it seemed to work very well, suddenly move it back to the motherboard. And then we learn about HBM. I think the real estate next to the CPU just got a whole bunch of competition for space. What if Intel eliminates or greatly reduces on-chip cache, and in its place, drops a massive 64GB HBMv2 (yes that memory AMD has invented) right next to the CPU core. Suddenly we don't need four or eight 240 pin slots on the motherboard anymore. And even without the memory slots, we would have far more memory on the CPU interposer than we have ever been allowed to drop into those 240 pin slots that just went poof! Then the next thought is "Oh man! The memory companies are going to disappear overnight!!" But users suddenly having 64 GB of extreme speed RAM with every CPU. And guess who gets to charge us for all of that memory. Yup, Intel takes over the vast majority of memory sold on the entire planet almost overnight.
This new HBM memory is going to completely change the computer industry. It will take some time, but I firmly believe that HBM will, within 5 to 7 years, replace nearly all other forms of memory. Memory will be sitting a fraction of a mm away from the processor. And there will be far more memory on most processors than there has ever been because HBM costs will be far below with single layer memory chips cost today.
I only have two issues with M.2, not that I don't think it's the proper upgrade path from SATA.
One of them, is that they run slower when they get hot, and this can be a problem on mobos that place them into parts of the board that get hot air blown onto (under graphics cards) or no air at all (behind mobo)
The other is ease of cloning and upgrading SSD drives. It's pretty simple if you have at least two of the same drive connectors, but if there's only one of them, then it's extra work.
Agreed about Killer Network. I use generic Qualcomm Atheros drivers in preference to the "Killer" ones & that results in fewer problems. There must be some reason mobo manufacturers keep including them though. Still, it keeps purveyors of Intel addin cards going I suppose...
Born To Be the Fastest! ASRock Ultra M.2 Gen3 x4 32Gb/s, 8.8% fast than M.2, in thin use, no extras, maybe x97. Maybe do better or worse now. 170 might be 107 chipset promised, I thank ASRock help in that way. Light coming in tunnel, will 190 or 109 be end of tunnel, for while. till 9/10 nm. game righ has 5 memory clips, 4 slots in photo, oh,well. how many zeons coming, computex and away.
everywong has to get brag right on something this new and power upper.....extreme with 4 390 or better yet 395. wheez 3.1usb +/or pci-e 3.1/?4 coming. 4k?. vats intel jibber new memory/cpu/graphics potential,ehhhhhh....iWant mine Hottttt.... drashek kappa kappa wong....errrr,wongee',wong,wong....
The lack of competition in the desktop space is absolutely ridiculous. On the GPU side AMD and Nvidia dramatically change their entire line up every couple years. Imagine if, like AMD's Gpu division, intel was under enough pressure to bring I7 performance down to i5 pricing and I5 performance down to I3 pricing every two years. I understand that CPU advancement is less important than GPU, but I doubt that Intel is pushing performance like they would if they had a serious competitor. However, without a competitor they're probably better off not driving AMD out of the cpu business as that may lead them to be seen monopoly.
Sick seeing only one-chip motherboards. Where are those with 2, 3 or 4? In adfition to utter stupidity of missing mobile revolution this is one more example of lost opportunity of AMD and Intel to sell more chips.
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dragantoe - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
considering the small socket, I'm assuming no 6 core cpus? Zen needs to get here quickerFlunk - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Why set your sights so low? I want octo-cores.DanNeely - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Not until Skylake-E, probably a year later, and probably using an ~2000 pin socket. The mainstream CPUs still top out at 4/8 because mass market software very rarely needs more than that, more cores results in less power/core and slower single threaded performance, and bigger dies are more expensive as well. (Which is also part of why the E CPUs don't have an IGP.)dragantoe - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
more cores doesn't necessary result in less single threaded performance, look at any of the intel extreme editions multicores ever... obviously it's more expensive, but there's no way in hell intel couldn't find a profitable way to make 6 core mainstream, they choose not to...DanNeely - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
At a given power level it does. The 130W extreme CPUs need stronger power delivery hardware and thicker power traces on the mobo. If they ran on the same socket as the mainstream parts, it would require the mainstream boards to be overbuilt so they could run the extreme CPUs driving up costs.Kevin G - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Socket 1150x motherboards are all designed to support a 95W processor. Recent Haswell and the coming Broadwell/Sky Lake chips are using far less than what the socket specs are rated for. This head room could be used to provide a 6 core chip without breaking the 95W barrier.rtho782 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Drop the IGP, add two cores, you probably get a net saving in die space, power use can't be that far off.Morawka - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
man they cant even get a quad core 14nm part out, despite a 1.5 year delay.. What makes you think 6 core is trivial?Laststop311 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Skylake adds an additional 4 pci-e lanes from the cpu so it now has 20 lanes instead of 16. This would allow the extreme 7 motherboard to have 3x ultra m2 slots using 12 lanes be all populated and still leave 8x lanes for a single gpu which has no impact on gaming performance compared to running at 16 lanes.This is really really awesome news. I was hoping that with skylake-e there would be at least 2 ultra m2 slots on the board as I need 1TB of ssd space at the bare minimum but 3 slots would be even better 3x 512GB sm951 ssd's for 1.5TB of super fast storage. With 40 lanes available on skylake-e thats the GPU on full 16x and 12x for ssd's so even the gimped 28 lane cpu on the E platform could do that well.
Man my skylake-e build is gonna be so epic and such a huge upgrade over my i7-980x.
Laststop311 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
And there lots of cool stuff you can do with your build when you don't need any 5.25" drives or any 3.5" drives or even any 2.5" drives. Can pull out a lot of drive sleds and free up a ton of space to do some crazy water cooling with big fat thick radiators. Or you can take it the other way with the extreme platform having mini-itx boards now that use so-dimms to keep quad channel available and make an incredible powerful tiny build where the only hardware inside the case is power supply, fans, wires, and motherboard with storage and gpu and everything else right on mobo. Need very little room to pull that off.foxtrot1_1 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
This, this is what I want to build.BubbaJoe TBoneMalone - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Same here. Patiently waiting for Skylake-E. I have a Core i7-920. 32" 4k monitors should be much more affordable by then. Would be nice to also have a completely wireless PC - no more audio/video/etc cable connections.DanNeely - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Good luck with that. My 920 died a month ago. My 930's still running; but I built a 4790 since i didn't want to be forced into a panic upgrade if the other one went too. Even if I waited a year there'd still be something major sitting on the horizon; probably USB 3.1 in the chipset; given Intel's lack of major changes in tock chipsets; probably not for another two years with the 300 series.Fujikoma - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Dropped a X5670 (six core Xeon) as a replacement to my 920 (glad a BIOS update allowed for it). 30 Watts less power for nearly twice as much processing power. Bought it used for $100, since I didn't feel the new build cost was worth it. Maybe this will justify shelling out some cash. I've been wanting a to build a new workstation for quite a while. The micro-atx builds just aren't as fun.Uxi - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
But Skylake-E won't be available before H2 2016, at least that is what I have read.DanNeely - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
For the last year or so, the rumors seem to've settled on still only having 16 PCIe lanes on the CPU; but that the chipset would have up to 20. The latter's a bit of deceptive though; similar to how the 8x/9x series chipsets had 18 flexible io ports that could be shared among PCIe/USB3/Sata the 1xx chipset will have 28 flexible io ports to share among all three; so unless you skip heavily on sata/usb3 you won't actually have the max 20 available on the chipset; and unless a lot of USB3 hubs/PLX/sata controller chips are used you won't be able to populate all of the PCIe/M2/Sata express connectors at once.ToTTenTranz - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
I'm not so sure that cutting the PCI-E bandwidth in half is a good idea during the advent of HSA-enabled graphics cards and applications.DanNeely - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
People've been saying some version of "but what if 8 lanes won't be be enough for new GPUs" with every generation of boards that've launched. Outside of occasional edge cases it's never been a problem in the real world.Ammaross - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
When it becomes a problem, PCIe 4.0 will happen, or CPUs will come with more lanes. Skylake is bumping up to 20 lanes for a reason. Need pushes features.tachikaze - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Actually it's my understanding that Skylake-S's connection to the "Sunrise Point" PCH has the 20 lanes, up from 8x PCIe 2.0. Skylake itself still has x16 CPU PCIe AFAICT.Morawka - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
This.... GPU's over the next year or two will be pushing PCI 3.0 Limits. Even at full 16x.We already see this in the enterprise space, where nvidia was force to make their own NV Link because PCI 3.0 was't gonna be enough for Volta
platinumjsi - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Not quite, the CPU still has 16 lanes but the PCH has recived a bump from 8 to 20 lanes, this is what enables the system to take 3x M.2 slots.SirKnobsworth - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
That's not correct. The CPU still only has 16 lanes, but the chipset now has up to 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes instead of 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes. Keep in mind though that the total number of lanes (USB3+PCIe+SATA) off the chipset is limited to 28, so using all of those lanes at one usually means sacrificing something else.Morawka - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Wikipedia disagree's with youSirKnobsworth - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
I wouldn't expect Wikipedia to give accurate information about products that haven't been released yet, but I suppose given that all information is uncertain. I'm basing my information on leaked spec sheets which detail the full range of available port configurations on the PCH:http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-s-platform-speci...
tachikaze - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
TMK Skylake still has 16x PCIe to the CPU directly, it's the secondary connection to the PCH that has been upgraded from PCIe 2.0 8x to PCIe 3.0 20x.http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-s-platform-speci...
The chart there also mentions Intel RST will support up to 3 M.2 slots, which would explain the 3 M.2 on the Extreme7, and also mean these M.2 would not interfere with e.g. 8/8 or 8/4/4 GPU connection (4/4/4/4 would be possible too but one 16x slot here is only single-width, alas)
Mark_gb - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Do not forget that Samsung now has stacked NAND. Another year or two, and they will be stacking NAND higher than a fat mans pancakes. And those little M.2 cards are going to explode in capacity, I can easily envision a 10TB M.2 card. How many of those would one need? In 10 years, if the demand is there, we could have some future version of M.2 that could have just incredible amounts of storage that is persistent. It might not be stacked NAND, but it will appear to us humans to function the same way.Many of us have read that the FIVR (power management hardware) which only recently was placed directly onto the CPU package by Intel, is going to move back to the motherboard with Skylake. Now I sit here and wonder why Intel would integrate the power on-die, and then despite the fact that it seemed to work very well, suddenly move it back to the motherboard. And then we learn about HBM. I think the real estate next to the CPU just got a whole bunch of competition for space. What if Intel eliminates or greatly reduces on-chip cache, and in its place, drops a massive 64GB HBMv2 (yes that memory AMD has invented) right next to the CPU core. Suddenly we don't need four or eight 240 pin slots on the motherboard anymore. And even without the memory slots, we would have far more memory on the CPU interposer than we have ever been allowed to drop into those 240 pin slots that just went poof! Then the next thought is "Oh man! The memory companies are going to disappear overnight!!" But users suddenly having 64 GB of extreme speed RAM with every CPU. And guess who gets to charge us for all of that memory. Yup, Intel takes over the vast majority of memory sold on the entire planet almost overnight.
This new HBM memory is going to completely change the computer industry. It will take some time, but I firmly believe that HBM will, within 5 to 7 years, replace nearly all other forms of memory. Memory will be sitting a fraction of a mm away from the processor. And there will be far more memory on most processors than there has ever been because HBM costs will be far below with single layer memory chips cost today.
romrunning - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
SATA Express needs to die. Only M.2 and NVMe are desirable for future chipsets!meacupla - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
I only have two issues with M.2, not that I don't think it's the proper upgrade path from SATA.One of them, is that they run slower when they get hot, and this can be a problem on mobos that place them into parts of the board that get hot air blown onto (under graphics cards) or no air at all (behind mobo)
The other is ease of cloning and upgrading SSD drives. It's pretty simple if you have at least two of the same drive connectors, but if there's only one of them, then it's extra work.
cyrand - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
I rather see SFF-8639 then M.2 on a desktop.vred - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
LOL @ Photoshopped Extreme7 labels.etamin - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
Very cool. Looking forward to Ultra M.2 going mainstream.Senti - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
I so hope that Killer network dies a painful death...Why it's so hard to use proper Intel x2 everywhere? Do gamers have the brains to think what type of NIC connects their servers? It's so not Killer...
TesseractOrion - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
Agreed about Killer Network. I use generic Qualcomm Atheros drivers in preference to the "Killer" ones & that results in fewer problems. There must be some reason mobo manufacturers keep including them though. Still, it keeps purveyors of Intel addin cards going I suppose...thomasxstewart - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
Born To Be the Fastest! ASRock Ultra M.2 Gen3 x4 32Gb/s, 8.8% fast than M.2, in thin use, no extras, maybe x97. Maybe do better or worse now. 170 might be 107 chipset promised, I thank ASRock help in that way. Light coming in tunnel, will 190 or 109 be end of tunnel, for while. till 9/10 nm.game righ has 5 memory clips, 4 slots in photo, oh,well. how many zeons coming, computex and away.
everywong has to get brag right on something this new and power upper.....extreme with 4 390 or better yet 395. wheez 3.1usb
+/or pci-e 3.1/?4 coming. 4k?. vats intel jibber new memory/cpu/graphics potential,ehhhhhh....iWant mine Hottttt....
drashek kappa kappa wong....errrr,wongee',wong,wong....
thomasxstewart - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
fatality 1, then i7. why push small pin count if bee case room for 2017 pin and spare...drashek bowling for bandwidth ahso HBM2 x 4,,,,.
tcb4 - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
The lack of competition in the desktop space is absolutely ridiculous. On the GPU side AMD and Nvidia dramatically change their entire line up every couple years. Imagine if, like AMD's Gpu division, intel was under enough pressure to bring I7 performance down to i5 pricing and I5 performance down to I3 pricing every two years. I understand that CPU advancement is less important than GPU, but I doubt that Intel is pushing performance like they would if they had a serious competitor. However, without a competitor they're probably better off not driving AMD out of the cpu business as that may lead them to be seen monopoly.SanX - Sunday, May 31, 2015 - link
Sick seeing only one-chip motherboards. Where are those with 2, 3 or 4? In adfition to utter stupidity of missing mobile revolution this is one more example of lost opportunity of AMD and Intel to sell more chips.