If the dimly lit, obscured motherboards pictured are any indication, Gigabyte will be announcing still more full ATX boards with no sign of any decent mATX in sight.
I vehemently disagree that we should commend Anandtech for meeting the absolute bare minimum. Of course a purported news site should disclose the buyer of their advertisements.
The only reason to publish advertisements in exactly the same format as regular news articles, and included in the same "news" feeds, is to trick users into reading them. It's as simple as that. It's an abhorrent practice and Anandtech is cheapened because of it.
DTX is a weird middle ground between mATX and mITX. It's not sufficiently small for a true SFF, and it probably doesn't save enough space (~1"?) to make the loss of expandability worth it. It's probably why it didn't take off.
There's nothing inherently "expensive" about a PCB that is 1-2" shorter than a mATX. If anything they were expensive because nobody wanted them. So pretty much nobody made them. And whoever did charged more for "the niche".
mDTX was slightly more popular, as it was basically a mITX with an extra PCIe slot and even cheaper than mITX. But DTX was that kind of compromise nobody really wanted: too small to offer expandability and too many features (like mATX and up), and too large to make a real SFF (mITX, mDTX).And it was also shot in the foot by the market for cases. You don't want to buy a DTX board to put in a mATX case. and DTX cases were just as rare sightings as the boards.
mATX should be the new ATX, and iTX should be the new mATX. Sure if you are building a Threadripper workstation and really need the space then ATX has a place but ATX is a stupid waste of space for 99% for what people are building.
Clearly non-2xxx Intel socket, huge 2-sided VRMs, RAM only on one side, looks like water cooling on the VRM on the right side board (difficult to see without zooming, but there's a blob there that looks like a g1/4 port). Giant shields covering the PCBs and m.2 slots.
It's gonna be YUGE! It will have 8, not 14 USB 3.2* ports!!!! And pci-e lanes* up the WAZOOOOOO!!! Also LED dianostics. This time in OLED! Oh, did you say you like phasing? For the FIRST TIME EVER 32bit, er i mean 32x VRM phases!! Did you say bandwidtch? Is 800Gbps fast enough for your 10Mb line? No? Well too bad, wait for starlink!!!!
* Gen1 * up to what the lowly consumer cpus support
Well, if they announce mobos, I really hope they have a manual switch for their dual BIOS. The software one they use is utterly garbage and completely unreliable, because said software corrupts itself. Then it goes into a rapid power cycle loop that kills everything else in the PC.
Not enough people get this. My old gigabyte z97 system corrupted one bios, just had to keep trying to boot 100 times until it finally decided to switch on its own. Not great.
the issue is with some Boards they dont have a physical switch and there is no clue in the paperwork how to swap to the alternate bios so can lead to frustration until the board decides to do it itself which can be at random if the built in software decides there is a fault and it then overwrites in some cases a perfectly good bios with the factory default which if your sensible you leave the alternate bios at when updating, a simple switch would be worthwhile got rid of my X470 because of this and bought an alternate x570 with a switch from another Brand, they also dont provide a jumper to reset the bios have never been comfortable prodding about in my motherboard with a screwdriver or paper clip deliberately shorting pins, they must cost 0.0001p to provide!
Prob got to pull the first chip. But Gigabyte has gone a long way. I think they are tied for my fav with MSI. Asus and Asrock dropped those spots a while back. Z77 was Asrocks tops. Z170 was Asus tops. Now they have weird bugs and high prices.
Nothing annoys me more than random revisions on their product without notification and keeping the same model name previously, and getting rid of their entire X299/X399 Aorus lineup without a decent replacement.
along with yet another NEW socket, and new motherboards. so much for a cpu only upgrade from good old intel, gonna need a new motherboard to go to comet lake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1200
really depends on the upgrade cycle. but at the same time, look at the longevity of amd's sockets and their cpus, there is no logical reason why intel cant have the same longevity, is there ?
Cute you think that those cards, regardless of what you are using them more - some "deep learning" or such - traffic to the cards is bursty and not a continuous saturated bus
In the worst case, the cards would sync up their 48GB of memory several times a second (model parallelism). There's a reason Nvidia makes NVlink bridges.
Most of that is an offshoot of One API which will start getting a massive push towards the end of the year. Will take some doing to dislodge Nvidia's Cuda Ecosystem.
That depends how you define "new" processors - Intel is working on Skylake 5.0 after all. Soon we can all bask in the glory of our 300W 10c20t space heater CPUs.
...or, you know, just use a 3900X at half the power.
They could at least future-proof a little bit and name the company Petabyte. Given the leisurely pace of technological development for PCs, it would stay relevant for a lot longer in the consumer space.
As long as the Intel fanboys are out there insisting on spending the extra money on the top-tier Intel chip because it gets 240fps instead of 220fps, they ARE competing.
[this aside incorporates an acknowledgement that there are AMD fanboys too]
All I know is I can't *wait* to get a PCI-e 4.0 capable Z490 board, and, one month later, stuff the latest non-PCI-e 4.0 capable CPU in it as it releases on the 14nm +++++++ process with 100-200 more MHz! :)
It's kind of ridiculous, he doesn't seem to realize we're talking about an old part. The Ryzen 3600X slaughters the 2 year old 1700X, isn't a problem, but Intel can't give us performance that beats a several year old part.
Except they can give you better performance if you compare apples with apples. Not cherry-picked special edition CPUs with mainstream parts. And trying to justify it by saying that the highest-end Ryzen 5 from 2019 beats the middle of the stack Ryzen 7 from 2017 is also a bit specious. Putting the same constraints on Intel's product stack gives a comparison between the i7-8700 and the i5-9600k, and funnily enough you find that the i5 outperforms the i7 when you make that fair comparison. Heck that i5 even outperforms the 8700k, the highest-end CPU Intel released in 2017.
Yes, AMD developed an amazing new architecture with Zen, leading to some huge year-on-year improvements, but Intel hasn't done that. They're chasing diminishing returns.
They're in the same stage that AMD was five years ago - desperately chasing iterative improvements in Bulldozer and trying to compete against a company which has a new architecture and massive improvements over the first few iterations.
Or alternatively the same stage that Intel were in in the Athlon 64 era when AMD took them apart in price/performance and were able to improve dramatically over the first few iterations, Intel left desperately trying to improve Netburst incrementally.
In short - it's expected that Intel will be having trouble competing, that's what history tells us, but nevertheless it doesn't excuse fanboy behaviour like making false equivalences and basing specious arguments on them.
Things I don't understand about marketing in the modern era: Why the HELL would someone pay money to get an ad for an ad published? Because that is what this is. They just paid money to run a commercial telling us that they are going to be running a commercial soon.
Exactly. Like watching a five second advert, for the film advert you're about to watch. Or watching cinema adverts for THE cinema you're currently sitting in.
I'd give my left tit for a reasonably priced mITX mobo with 4 ram banks (make them SO-DIMM if you want to save space) and 2 nvme slots (PCI 4.0). Create some space by only having 2 SATA ports, fewer USB3 ports, and putting one of the NVME slots on the back if needed.
Bonus points if you include a PCIe riser cable so that the GPU can go in any orientation. An on-board 10gb or 5gb ethernet port would also be very nice indeed - prices have recently fallen considerably recently.
That would be a real mini-powerhouse PC - modern mITX systems can be under 3-4 litres (including GPU and pico PSU) or about the volume of a couple of thick hardback books. Not too bothered if it's Intel or AMD - both have their advantages.
I’m only seeing one sponsored post on the front page out of maybe 30 articles. And it’s clearly labelled as such. Hardly an explosion.
More to the point, online advertising spend has dropped due to coronavirus. Expect to see a lot more sponsored posts at your favourite websites and be thankful they label them clearly.
Ars Technica, god bless their hearts, have just done a wildly successful paid membership sign-up drive that got around 200-300% of target. Very few websites, even dear AnandTech, are able to do something like that.
It's one now, but anandtech didn't used to have 9000 banner/etc ads vomitted over every square inch of the page. My worry is that the corporate overlords won't be able to resist jamming paid-noncontent into every second article slot and leave the site a wasteland in their wake.
It's clearly stated to be a sponsored post so I have absolutely no problem with this. Hardware sites have to pay their bills too and this is a legit revenue stream.
As per the editorial firewall, the AnandTech editorial staff has no involvement with sponsored content. This is handled by our publisher's sales department.
Upon careful image analysis, I can confirm the new motherboards have PCI Express and DIMM slots. Not yet confirmed is whether they are releasing more passively cooled x570 boards.
Something big, indeed! A Motherboard Buyer's Bill of Rights
• Henceforth, we will never again mislead customers, at all, about phases.
• Henceforth, we will employ astroturfers to relentlessly and mercilessly mock all competitors' products if they mislead about phases — so that they will fall in line with adequate business practices.
• Henceforth, we will provide heatsinks that are designed for efficiency — and designed so that aesthetic considerations cannot result in the degradation of said efficiency.
• Henceforth, we will provide a BIOS flashback button on the back panel of any motherboard that allows overclocking.
• Henceforth, we will provide a numeric post code LED on the back panel of any motherboard that is marketed to overclocking enthusiasts.
• Henceforth, we will provide lit LED color code error notification on the boards below those marketed to overclocking enthusiasts — any board that allows overclocking.
• Henceforth, we will provide the ability to separately regular boot voltages on all enthusiast-grade boards.
• Henceforth, we will consider all boards that we use the phase count as a selling point for (on our website listing for the board and/or on the packaging) enthusiast-grade boards.
• Henceforth, if we offer water-cooled and/or hybrid VRMs on the Intel platform we will offer that on the AMD platform, and not in a "limited edition" that's wildly overpriced — but with basically the same margin as the Intel board.
• Henceforth, we will offer a passively-cooled chipset X570 board in the moderate price range, not just the high one. This will be the case until we discontinue X570. If B550 requires similar chipset cooling we will offer a moderately-priced model with passive cooling, not just one at the high end of the range.
• Henceforth, we will not use black on black for boards, which makes it very difficult to see what you're doing.
• Henceforth, we will not offer any general-purpose motherboards that have fewer than three fan headers.
• Henceforth, we will not make serious changes to boards and merely change the version number. We will also add a unique suffix letter for the names of revised boards that have seen substantial changes, not a "1.0, 2.0" scheme. Example, instead of 970A-UDP3 2.0 it will be 970A-UDP3-B, with 970-UDP3-A being the original board.
• Henceforth, we will make it obvious which direction individual front panel connectors should go in, so that newbies aren't confused.
• Henceforth, we will not use plastic push pins for heavy heatsinks.
• Henceforth, we will not choose thermal TIM that dries up well before the end of the board's useful lifespan.
• Henceforth, we will not make it possible to input very dangerous voltage values without using a special separate Dangerous Overlocking screen. The board will also be designed to never accidentally use those values, such as if BIOS corruption occurs.
• Henceforth, our automatic overlocking will not use clearly dangerous voltage levels that will degrade components prematurely.
• Henceforth, all dual BIOS boards will have a jumper or switch to choose between one and the other.
• Henceforth, all enthusiast-grade boards' fan headers will have PWM capability. Boards below that level will have no fewer than two PWM fan headers (which means the mandatory third can be a plain 3 pin).
• Henceforth, all motherboards shall have a feature that allows the board to pause posting by default to display the boot selection screen, so people don't have to press keys. Similarly, boards will have the ability to boot directly to BIOS without having to press a key.
• Henceforth, all enthusiast-grade boards will have the ability to test RAM thoroughly, including strenuous overclocking testing, without booting into a typical operating system (as OS corruption is a serious concern). The boards will be able to separately and, if desired, simultaneously, test CPU overclocking. The overclocking tests will verify data integrity and provide temperature monitoring. They will have two levels of testing length: Extreme Stability and Gaming Stability.
• Henceforth, only one board in any range will have "Gamer" or "Gaming" in its name.
These two bits about boot error codes were a little unclear. The point is that the enthusiast-grade boards would have the numeric post code LED on the back panel and the cheaper "midrange" or "midrange-affordable" boards will have the color LED on the motherboard error code system. The point is that no expensive board would have just the more vague and less convenient color code system on the board and no inexpensive board that allows overclocking would have nothing at all.
And, of course, there is a typo with "regular voltage". It should be regulate.
I could get behind that announcement. A company like that might clean up the enthusiast market... Sad thing is it probably wouldn't add much to price of their products and yet here we are....
mATX epyc motherboard with 8+ ram slots, please. There is no reason for all those PCIE slots on a motherboard anymore. All you need is one for GPU and one for m2 SSD slot expansion. and a smaller one for sound cards/ or alike. Rest is simply a waste of space.
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FreihEitner - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
If the dimly lit, obscured motherboards pictured are any indication, Gigabyte will be announcing still more full ATX boards with no sign of any decent mATX in sight.boozed - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
"Why is there zero analysis in this article and why is it so breathless?"*by: Sponsored Post*
"Oh..."
PixyMisa - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
It don't mind this too much. I like Gigabyte motherboards, and it says "Sponsored Post" in the title, the category, and the author.Just so long as when review time comes, if it sucks, the reviewer can say that it sucks.
boozed - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Yeah, at least it's up-frontsupcaj - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I vehemently disagree that we should commend Anandtech for meeting the absolute bare minimum. Of course a purported news site should disclose the buyer of their advertisements.The only reason to publish advertisements in exactly the same format as regular news articles, and included in the same "news" feeds, is to trick users into reading them. It's as simple as that. It's an abhorrent practice and Anandtech is cheapened because of it.
Threska - Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - link
The only people "tricked" are those unable to read in the first place. Clearly not the target consumer anyway.FreckledTrout - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
At least here they say it in the very first word of the title so you know not to click. Zero click bait here which I like.Operandi - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
I guess I'm not the only one thats interested in mATX then....AdditionalPylons - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Me too.Valantar - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I prefer ITX, but mATX above ATX any day of the week. Here's to wishing DTX makes a large-scale comeback.close - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
DTX is a weird middle ground between mATX and mITX. It's not sufficiently small for a true SFF, and it probably doesn't save enough space (~1"?) to make the loss of expandability worth it. It's probably why it didn't take off.Dug - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Because it was expensive.close - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
There's nothing inherently "expensive" about a PCB that is 1-2" shorter than a mATX. If anything they were expensive because nobody wanted them. So pretty much nobody made them. And whoever did charged more for "the niche".mDTX was slightly more popular, as it was basically a mITX with an extra PCIe slot and even cheaper than mITX. But DTX was that kind of compromise nobody really wanted: too small to offer expandability and too many features (like mATX and up), and too large to make a real SFF (mITX, mDTX).And it was also shot in the foot by the market for cases. You don't want to buy a DTX board to put in a mATX case. and DTX cases were just as rare sightings as the boards.
Operandi - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Basically I look at it like this...mATX should be the new ATX, and iTX should be the new mATX. Sure if you are building a Threadripper workstation and really need the space then ATX has a place but ATX is a stupid waste of space for 99% for what people are building.
alufan - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
if the image is true then it almost looks like a thread ripper socket or even an Intel not an AM4Valantar - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
https://imgur.com/VAbheOMClearly non-2xxx Intel socket, huge 2-sided VRMs, RAM only on one side, looks like water cooling on the VRM on the right side board (difficult to see without zooming, but there's a blob there that looks like a g1/4 port). Giant shields covering the PCBs and m.2 slots.
Move along, nothing to see here.
nevcairiel - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Its Intels Z470, multiple motherboard vendors have been putting out teasers for a April 30 reveal.Byte - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
It's gonna be YUGE! It will have 8, not 14 USB 3.2* ports!!!! And pci-e lanes* up the WAZOOOOOO!!! Also LED dianostics. This time in OLED! Oh, did you say you like phasing? For the FIRST TIME EVER 32bit, er i mean 32x VRM phases!! Did you say bandwidtch? Is 800Gbps fast enough for your 10Mb line? No? Well too bad, wait for starlink!!!!* Gen1
* up to what the lowly consumer cpus support
Spunjji - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I did lol 👍Dug - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I'm so tired of the huge ATX form factor and giant cases.brontes - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Check out the cerberus x case.meacupla - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
Well, if they announce mobos, I really hope they have a manual switch for their dual BIOS.The software one they use is utterly garbage and completely unreliable, because said software corrupts itself. Then it goes into a rapid power cycle loop that kills everything else in the PC.
Ej24 - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
Not enough people get this. My old gigabyte z97 system corrupted one bios, just had to keep trying to boot 100 times until it finally decided to switch on its own. Not great.Deicidium369 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Isn't that a Dual BIOS system? Most Gigabyte arealufan - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
the issue is with some Boards they dont have a physical switch and there is no clue in the paperwork how to swap to the alternate bios so can lead to frustration until the board decides to do it itself which can be at random if the built in software decides there is a fault and it then overwrites in some cases a perfectly good bios with the factory default which if your sensible you leave the alternate bios at when updating, a simple switch would be worthwhile got rid of my X470 because of this and bought an alternate x570 with a switch from another Brand, they also dont provide a jumper to reset the bios have never been comfortable prodding about in my motherboard with a screwdriver or paper clip deliberately shorting pins, they must cost 0.0001p to provide!Byte - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Prob got to pull the first chip. But Gigabyte has gone a long way. I think they are tied for my fav with MSI. Asus and Asrock dropped those spots a while back. Z77 was Asrocks tops. Z170 was Asus tops. Now they have weird bugs and high prices.meacupla - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Both BIOS chips are soldered in on most gigabyte mobos.and it's a PITA to desolder chips on a very large PCB, like a mobo.
erinadreno - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
I think everyone knows what they are. Unless b550 time travels to presentPro-competition - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
ECC RAM!!!nandnandnand - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Fat chance.DigitalFreak - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
More like "Sink to new lows"gamoniac - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
We are reading this the articles for "free", aren't we? Sponsorship serves a purpose.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I was making fun of the tagline, not Anandtech.wr3zzz - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
A MB that will break the $1000 barrier!!! With Swarovski crystals!!!Deicidium369 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
They already had a board that sold above the MSRP of $8-900 ... no crystals - I bet your little AMD rig is bathed in RGB light.airdrifting - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
Nothing annoys me more than random revisions on their product without notification and keeping the same model name previously, and getting rid of their entire X299/X399 Aorus lineup without a decent replacement.Deicidium369 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
it's the 400 series board to support Comet Lake.Korguz - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
along with yet another NEW socket, and new motherboards. so much for a cpu only upgrade from good old intel, gonna need a new motherboard to go to comet lake.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1200
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
How often do you NOT upgrade your CPU and motherboard at the same time?Threska - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Still on AM3, so from Phenom on up.Korguz - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
really depends on the upgrade cycle. but at the same time, look at the longevity of amd's sockets and their cpus, there is no logical reason why intel cant have the same longevity, is there ?haukionkannel - Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - link
Less driver problems where you want to get new cpu to work on older motherboard... so less work to do with drivers. Cheaper that way...Eulytaur - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
Z490 perhaps? The socket doesn't look like AM4 on the middle oneshabby - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
Yup, if you increase the gamma the left one has a z490 on it.Deicidium369 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Comet Lake is being release in May sometimes - so Z400 series is the best betp1esk - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
I'd like to see something like their TRX40 AORUS XTREME only with a PCIe switch so that all four GPUs can get full 16x bandwidth.Deicidium369 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Cute you think that those cards, regardless of what you are using them more - some "deep learning" or such - traffic to the cards is bursty and not a continuous saturated busp1esk - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
In the worst case, the cards would sync up their 48GB of memory several times a second (model parallelism). There's a reason Nvidia makes NVlink bridges.Ej24 - Monday, April 27, 2020 - link
Intel MDF (market development funding) has gotten real good recently. Wonder if it's because they're feeling the squeeze?Deicidium369 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Most of that is an offshoot of One API which will start getting a massive push towards the end of the year. Will take some doing to dislodge Nvidia's Cuda Ecosystem.Flunk - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Who cares, no new processors mean we don't need new boards. Boards are a distant second-fiddle.Valantar - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
That depends how you define "new" processors - Intel is working on Skylake 5.0 after all. Soon we can all bask in the glory of our 300W 10c20t space heater CPUs....or, you know, just use a 3900X at half the power.
Alistair - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
It's kind of funny reading everyone speculating, we already know everything, the CPUs and the motherboards. Not sure if I can post this here?https://videocardz.com/newz/entire-gigabyte-z490-m...
Danvelopment - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
They're renaming to Terabyte?It's lucky they didn't choose Kilobyte.
PeachNCream - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
They could at least future-proof a little bit and name the company Petabyte. Given the leisurely pace of technological development for PCs, it would stay relevant for a lot longer in the consumer space.yeeeeman - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Why bother with sponsoring a z490 motherboard launch?Valantar - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Because Intel's marketing department is covering the cost, and Intel desperately wants to appear as if they are competing with AMD.1_rick - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
As long as the Intel fanboys are out there insisting on spending the extra money on the top-tier Intel chip because it gets 240fps instead of 220fps, they ARE competing.[this aside incorporates an acknowledgement that there are AMD fanboys too]
shabby - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
They drove a dump truck full of money to dr Ian's house...scineram - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
They will need some big ass VRMs for the new Skylake Refresh, for sure.MDD1963 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
All I know is I can't *wait* to get a PCI-e 4.0 capable Z490 board, and, one month later, stuff the latest non-PCI-e 4.0 capable CPU in it as it releases on the 14nm +++++++ process with 100-200 more MHz! :)Alistair - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
It doesn't really have more mhz. That's only the 10 core. For example the "new" 10600k has lower boost clocks than the 8086k etc.mkaibear - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
> the "new" 10600k has lower boost clocks than the 8086k etcWhy are you comparing a mainstream i5 part with a special edition i7? That seems a bit specious.
Alistair - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
came out 2 years ago, the point is they were mass producing a better version of the same CPU 2 years ago...mkaibear - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Again, you're comparing a mainstream volume i5 part with a cherrypicked premium i7.It's like saying "well, the Bugatti Veyron could achieve 240mph 15 years ago so by now you'd expect my Ford Mondeo to be able to achieve 240mph"
1_rick - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Remember when the mainstream parts were faster every year? Pepperidge Farms does.Alistair - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
It's kind of ridiculous, he doesn't seem to realize we're talking about an old part. The Ryzen 3600X slaughters the 2 year old 1700X, isn't a problem, but Intel can't give us performance that beats a several year old part.Alistair - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I want a 5ghz 6 core Intel CPU, not too much to ask.mkaibear - Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - link
Except they can give you better performance if you compare apples with apples. Not cherry-picked special edition CPUs with mainstream parts. And trying to justify it by saying that the highest-end Ryzen 5 from 2019 beats the middle of the stack Ryzen 7 from 2017 is also a bit specious. Putting the same constraints on Intel's product stack gives a comparison between the i7-8700 and the i5-9600k, and funnily enough you find that the i5 outperforms the i7 when you make that fair comparison. Heck that i5 even outperforms the 8700k, the highest-end CPU Intel released in 2017.Yes, AMD developed an amazing new architecture with Zen, leading to some huge year-on-year improvements, but Intel hasn't done that. They're chasing diminishing returns.
They're in the same stage that AMD was five years ago - desperately chasing iterative improvements in Bulldozer and trying to compete against a company which has a new architecture and massive improvements over the first few iterations.
Or alternatively the same stage that Intel were in in the Athlon 64 era when AMD took them apart in price/performance and were able to improve dramatically over the first few iterations, Intel left desperately trying to improve Netburst incrementally.
In short - it's expected that Intel will be having trouble competing, that's what history tells us, but nevertheless it doesn't excuse fanboy behaviour like making false equivalences and basing specious arguments on them.
deil - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
well they never bothered about such media coverage, so I wonder how much innovation appeared in those...Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Things I don't understand about marketing in the modern era: Why the HELL would someone pay money to get an ad for an ad published? Because that is what this is. They just paid money to run a commercial telling us that they are going to be running a commercial soon.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Exactly. Like watching a five second advert, for the film advert you're about to watch. Or watching cinema adverts for THE cinema you're currently sitting in.Stochastic - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Well, it's getting people to talk about their product. So mission accomplished?Rookierookie - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
At the very minimum, you are thinking about Gigabyte right now, which is more than can be said before you saw this ad.Threska - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Long as the quality is there.FakThisShttyGame - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Big price cuts or I dont really careTomatotech - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I'd give my left tit for a reasonably priced mITX mobo with 4 ram banks (make them SO-DIMM if you want to save space) and 2 nvme slots (PCI 4.0). Create some space by only having 2 SATA ports, fewer USB3 ports, and putting one of the NVME slots on the back if needed.Bonus points if you include a PCIe riser cable so that the GPU can go in any orientation. An on-board 10gb or 5gb ethernet port would also be very nice indeed - prices have recently fallen considerably recently.
That would be a real mini-powerhouse PC - modern mITX systems can be under 3-4 litres (including GPU and pico PSU) or about the volume of a couple of thick hardback books. Not too bothered if it's Intel or AMD - both have their advantages.
Brane2 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Nothing ever Gigabyte does is BIG.They could fill whole premise with TNT and detonate it and it wouldn't be that BIG.
So chill out...
Brane2 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
My prediction:EPSTEIN DIDN'T KILL HIMSELF.
Everthing else they got is just a fart in the wind...
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
LOLDanNeely - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Was this signed off on by the Anandtech editorial staff; or have your corporate overlords decided to ram a new form of advertising down our throats?I'm concerned here because an explosion of sponsored posts really destroys any perception of site quality.
Tomatotech - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I’m only seeing one sponsored post on the front page out of maybe 30 articles. And it’s clearly labelled as such. Hardly an explosion.More to the point, online advertising spend has dropped due to coronavirus. Expect to see a lot more sponsored posts at your favourite websites and be thankful they label them clearly.
Ars Technica, god bless their hearts, have just done a wildly successful paid membership sign-up drive that got around 200-300% of target. Very few websites, even dear AnandTech, are able to do something like that.
Korguz - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
what explosion of sponsored posts ?DanNeely - Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - link
It's one now, but anandtech didn't used to have 9000 banner/etc ads vomitted over every square inch of the page. My worry is that the corporate overlords won't be able to resist jamming paid-noncontent into every second article slot and leave the site a wasteland in their wake.Koenig168 - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
It's clearly stated to be a sponsored post so I have absolutely no problem with this. Hardware sites have to pay their bills too and this is a legit revenue stream.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - link
As per the editorial firewall, the AnandTech editorial staff has no involvement with sponsored content. This is handled by our publisher's sales department.Sivar - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Upon careful image analysis, I can confirm the new motherboards have PCI Express and DIMM slots. Not yet confirmed is whether they are releasing more passively cooled x570 boards.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
Something big, indeed! A Motherboard Buyer's Bill of Rights• Henceforth, we will never again mislead customers, at all, about phases.
• Henceforth, we will employ astroturfers to relentlessly and mercilessly mock all competitors' products if they mislead about phases — so that they will fall in line with adequate business practices.
• Henceforth, we will provide heatsinks that are designed for efficiency — and designed so that aesthetic considerations cannot result in the degradation of said efficiency.
• Henceforth, we will provide a BIOS flashback button on the back panel of any motherboard that allows overclocking.
• Henceforth, we will provide a numeric post code LED on the back panel of any motherboard that is marketed to overclocking enthusiasts.
• Henceforth, we will provide lit LED color code error notification on the boards below those marketed to overclocking enthusiasts — any board that allows overclocking.
• Henceforth, we will provide the ability to separately regular boot voltages on all enthusiast-grade boards.
• Henceforth, we will consider all boards that we use the phase count as a selling point for (on our website listing for the board and/or on the packaging) enthusiast-grade boards.
• Henceforth, if we offer water-cooled and/or hybrid VRMs on the Intel platform we will offer that on the AMD platform, and not in a "limited edition" that's wildly overpriced — but with basically the same margin as the Intel board.
• Henceforth, we will offer a passively-cooled chipset X570 board in the moderate price range, not just the high one. This will be the case until we discontinue X570. If B550 requires similar chipset cooling we will offer a moderately-priced model with passive cooling, not just one at the high end of the range.
• Henceforth, we will not use black on black for boards, which makes it very difficult to see what you're doing.
• Henceforth, we will not offer any general-purpose motherboards that have fewer than three fan headers.
• Henceforth, we will not make serious changes to boards and merely change the version number. We will also add a unique suffix letter for the names of revised boards that have seen substantial changes, not a "1.0, 2.0" scheme. Example, instead of 970A-UDP3 2.0 it will be 970A-UDP3-B, with 970-UDP3-A being the original board.
• Henceforth, we will make it obvious which direction individual front panel connectors should go in, so that newbies aren't confused.
• Henceforth, we will not use plastic push pins for heavy heatsinks.
• Henceforth, we will not choose thermal TIM that dries up well before the end of the board's useful lifespan.
• Henceforth, we will not make it possible to input very dangerous voltage values without using a special separate Dangerous Overlocking screen. The board will also be designed to never accidentally use those values, such as if BIOS corruption occurs.
• Henceforth, our automatic overlocking will not use clearly dangerous voltage levels that will degrade components prematurely.
• Henceforth, all dual BIOS boards will have a jumper or switch to choose between one and the other.
• Henceforth, all enthusiast-grade boards' fan headers will have PWM capability. Boards below that level will have no fewer than two PWM fan headers (which means the mandatory third can be a plain 3 pin).
• Henceforth, all motherboards shall have a feature that allows the board to pause posting by default to display the boot selection screen, so people don't have to press keys. Similarly, boards will have the ability to boot directly to BIOS without having to press a key.
• Henceforth, all enthusiast-grade boards will have the ability to test RAM thoroughly, including strenuous overclocking testing, without booting into a typical operating system (as OS corruption is a serious concern). The boards will be able to separately and, if desired, simultaneously, test CPU overclocking. The overclocking tests will verify data integrity and provide temperature monitoring. They will have two levels of testing length: Extreme Stability and Gaming Stability.
• Henceforth, only one board in any range will have "Gamer" or "Gaming" in its name.
I can get behind a big announcement like this.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
These two bits about boot error codes were a little unclear. The point is that the enthusiast-grade boards would have the numeric post code LED on the back panel and the cheaper "midrange" or "midrange-affordable" boards will have the color LED on the motherboard error code system. The point is that no expensive board would have just the more vague and less convenient color code system on the board and no inexpensive board that allows overclocking would have nothing at all.And, of course, there is a typo with "regular voltage". It should be regulate.
andrewaggb - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link
I could get behind that announcement. A company like that might clean up the enthusiast market... Sad thing is it probably wouldn't add much to price of their products and yet here we are....sharath.naik - Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - link
mATX epyc motherboard with 8+ ram slots, please. There is no reason for all those PCIE slots on a motherboard anymore. All you need is one for GPU and one for m2 SSD slot expansion. and a smaller one for sound cards/ or alike. Rest is simply a waste of space.Threska - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
Depends upon if one's satisfied with the integrated components.Cullinaire - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
I want a mobo with an honest to goodness TURBO (maybe more than one)...surely there's enough waste heat that can drive them right???