Peculiarities of Intel’s 7 series chipsets

In 1H 2012 Intel plans to launch its first 22nm processors, Ivy Bridge, that will be compatible (through BIOS update) with motherboards based on Intel 6-series chipset and Socket LGA 1155. These processors will be also compatible with products based on upcoming 7 series chipsets, excluding X79.

Chinese media source has published couple of slides about 7-series chipset. As you see, Intel will present three models in Consumer segment — Z77, Z75 and H77, and three more for business platform — Q77, Q75 and B77.

Motherboard designers that will use Z77, Z75 and H77 chipsets, will meet a great variety of display outputs to choose from including D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. It will provide connectivity of three monitors at a time. Among new things, it worth to note USB 3.0 and PCI-Express 3.0 support. In fact, 7 series Consumer chipsets will have four integrated USB 3.0 and two SATA 3 ports as well as four SATA 2 ports. Apart from that, new boards will feature Gigabit Ethernet adapter, integrated sound codec, PCI Express 2.0 x8. Let’s not forget the updated Rapid Storage Technology.

Z77 and Z75 mark out by having rich CPU overclocking options and multi-GPU setup support (full PCI Express x16 is used for single card config). On the other hand, H77 will have only one 3D-card expansion slot. One more thing to note about Z77 and H77 chipsets, it will feature Smart Response Technology dedicated to increase system performance via caching by combining HDD and SSD in a single PC.