News Intel H670, B660 and H610 Chipset Analysis, Motherboard Roundup

[Admin]

Motherboard vendors announce new motherboards for Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake CPUs.

Intel H670, B660 and H610 Chipset Analysis, Motherboard Roundup : Read more

 

[shady28]

Just comparing the MSI Z690 vs B660 model for model, looks like generally about $50-$80 cheaper. Looks like a good option for any K-series Alder Lake to me.

H610 looks like it is not so bad here, nothing special but seems perfectly fine for a non-K chip provided one doesn't care about memory OC past DDR4-3200 and doesn't have a need for 20Gbps+ USB.

 

[logainofhades]

Those prices are still not very good value.

 

[saltweaver]

H670 chipset supply up to 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes, while the B660 chipset lands with up to 6 of them. What does this mean for the rest of the build?

 

[TJ Hooker]

The third row in the table ("System Memory Channels Supported") should be renamed or edited. The numbers in that row are the max number of DIMMs per channel, not number of channels. All the chipsets support dual channel, but H610 only supports one DIMM per channel while the other chipsets support two.

 

[regs01]

Still no BIOS Flashback on MSI boards. Asus at least has CrashFree BIOS, while Gigabyte has BIOS Flashback on almost every board.

 

[Jumpgate]

There's a mismatch between the article and the info on ark.intel.com
The article states that the H610 chipset has 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes
According to ark.intel.com, it has 12 lanes:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/218829/intel-h610-chipset.html#tab-blade-1-0-4

 

[saltweaver]

What does lanes mean when choosing CPU or GPU for motherboard?

 

[Jumpgate]

What does lanes mean when choosing CPU or GPU for motherboard?

The first PCIe slot (closest to the CPU socket) is often connected directly to the CPU which has it's own PCIe controller and a certain amount of lanes,
so if you install just one GPU, the chipset's lane count is irrelevant

It becomes relevant if you want to add another GPU and/or any other high-bandwidth PCIe device.
For example, if the chipset has a low number of lanes, you may not be able to use an M.2 slot and a certain PCIe slot at the same time
(this should be stated in the motherboard's manual)

 

[saltweaver]

It becomes relevant if you want to add another GPU and/or any other high-bandwidth PCIe device.
For example, if the chipset has a low number of lanes, you may not be able to use an M.2 slot and a certain PCIe slot at the same time

Thank you. Basically with B660 I can only have one GPU and one SSD M.2 device plugged, is that right?

 

[DRagor]

Thank you. Basically with B660 I can only have one GPU and one SSD M.2 device plugged, is that right?

Far from that. One GPU and one M.2 are fed directly form CPU lanes. That's before we use a single motherboard lane. B660 should be able to easily run two additional M.2 drives (though that depends how manufacturers decide to split mobo lanes).

 

[Jumpgate]

Thank you. Basically with B660 I can only have one GPU and one SSD M.2 device plugged, is that right?

No, that would be H610.
As @DRagor stated earlier, the higher-end chipsets can accommodate A LOT more than that.

 

[Jumpgate]

There's a mismatch between the article and the info on ark.intel.com
The article states that the H610 chipset has 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes
According to ark.intel.com, it has 12 lanes:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/218829/intel-h610-chipset.html#tab-blade-1-0-4

Now that the entire line of Alder Lake processors has been released, I'm even more confused.
According to the specs from ark.intel.com:

Core i9/i9K: 8 P-Cores + 8 E-Cores / 30MB L3 / 14MB L2
Core i7/i7K: 8 P-Cores + 4 E-Cores / 25MB L3 / 12MB L2
Core i5K: 6 P-Cores + 4 E-Cores / 20MB L3 / 9.5MB L2

So far it's pretty consistent: (1.25MB L2 + 2.5MB L3) per P-Core, and (2MB L2 + 5MB L3) per 4xE-Cores

Core i5 (non K): 6 P-Cores + 0! E-Cores / 18MB L3 / 7.5MB L2 per P-Core
Core i3: 4 P-Cores + 0 E-Cores / 16MB L3 / 5MB L2 per P-Core

So no E-Cores at all, and 1.25MB L2 + 3MB L3 per P-Core (or just 'Core')

Looks like L2 is consistent across the board, but apparently Core i3 and Core i5 non-K have more L3 cache per core than the higher-end models?