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After a few very specific models leaked a few weeks ago, in the last hour we are living a real deluge of motherboards with Intel chipsets the new 7 Series. This can only be due to the launch of Ivy Bridge approaches, but for now, Intel has not confirmed anything.

We will not mention all the new motherboards with one of the Intel market 7 Series, as would not stop until the next decade, although it does highlight some of the most important. Today we speak of a couple of new Zotac mini-ITX format that will bring the next generation chipsets Panther Point: Intel Z77 and H77.

Mini-ITX format of 17 × 17 centimeters, the Zotac Z77-ITX WiFi features the LGA 1155 and will complete compatibility with both new Ivy Bridge as with previous Sandy Bridge. New to this board from previous models are closely related to the chipset: integrates a PCI Express 3.0 x 16, four USB 3.0, 2 Gigabit Ethernet, SATA II and SATA 6 Gbps and HDMI video outputs (two) and mini Display Port.

We talked about it a few days ago and we can confirm its presence in the market. The LGA2011 socket and X79 Intel chipset lead the new Intel Core i7-3820, the new Sandy Bridge E that uses high-performance platform.

This is a 32-nanometer processor, 3.6 GHz clock (Turbo up to 3.8) and four cores (eight threads thanks to Hyper threading). This is the entry model of the ranges most powerful Intel as its price, although expensive, is the lowest among the Sandy Bridge E available: $ 294.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the Intel Core i7-3820 and other models is that is locked for over clocking, unlike the other two 3930K and 3960X, since it loses the nicknames ‘K’ or ‘X’. All other features are also significantly reduced, but not excessively.

The question now is whether the Core i7-3820 will be much better than the next Ivy Bridge, which seems unlikely if we consider that appears to have similar performance at 2600K according to some benchmarks. It is hoped that the model equivalent to the latter at Ivy Bridge, the i7-3770K, exceeds these figures.

Perhaps you may remember Knights Ferry, any geek’s wet dream. That project ended up canceling and led to Knights Corner, the current development that inherits a similar idea but adopts modern times.

Knights Corner, still in development, will have 50 general purpose x86 cores and aims to be able to handle peaks of 1 Tflop. The format, predictably, is PCI Express and is used extensively in large data centers, render farms and the like.

Knights Corner Technology is a great competitor NVidia Tegra and its use in large supercomputers, such as the BSC will be renewed soon. The principal difference between Tegra and Knights Corner is the architecture: the NVidia committed to achieve high efficiency energy, Intel Knights Corner will be composed of general-purpose x86 cores, more specifically based on Pentium processors a few years ago. These processors have been some design changes, such as the use of Tri-Gate transistors to 22 nanometers that come with Ivy Bridge.

We repeat once again that despite not yet been released Knights Corner is the future of supercomputing, or at least has to be one of the technologies to consider. Efficiency, effectiveness and efficiency will be key to future servers.

MSI is the one that has begun implementing the new generation of PCI Express 3.0. The MSI has done with his Z68A-GD80 (G3), a board designed for Intel processors (LGA 1155) and integrates the Intel chipset and specifications Z68 quite normal now, except of course the PCIe 3.0.

PCI Express 3.0 comes as a natural evolution from previous versions like 2.0 and the current widely used in virtually all motherboards on the market. According to MSI the bandwidth supported is double favor, of course, the 3.0, although in reality the components that connect to the new slot cannot take full advantage … for now. PCIe 3.0 is fully backwards compatible with version 2.0, which is a great advantage to use all current graphics cards.

The other technical features of the MSI Z68A-GD80 (Gen 3) talk about DDR3, SATA III and II versions (6 and 3 respectively Gbps), USB 3.0 and 2.0 and any little thing. As the number of PCIe 3.0 ports that offer, it is two to 16x.

MSI also announced the Z68A-GD65 (G3), another board almost identical except that it incorporates either eSATA or Firewire, and because its PCIe 2.0 slots are some less. Read more… »

Ivy Bridge, the Intel microprocessor family that will succeed the Intel Core 2nd Gen. (or Sandy Bridge), will bring about an evolution toward the main manufacturing process of 22 nanometers, but could also have some surprises: PCI-Express 3.0.

PCIe has become in recent years in connection standard graphics card to the motherboard in the domestic sphere, i.e. on computers in our homes. Currently dominates the PCI-E version 2.0. The main improvements involve the third generation would be a bandwidth of twice based on 16 links (16x), so that the GPU could communicate much faster with the other components of the computer.

Obviously, besides the improvement provided by PCI-Express 3.0 also need to evolve both graphics cards and motherboards, especially its chipsets. Ivy Bridge chipset will be the first to support PCI-E 3.0, and supposedly the motherboard for these new chips would also be the first to use their slots (we’ll see if all or some of them.)

With all this, the launch of Ivy Bridge could bring enough news about 22 nanometers, new motherboards and new chipsets, new socket (not yet confirmed this, but we all know Intel), PCI-Express 3.0 and the new cards graphs. When? 2012, probably at CES 2012.