what's different between 200 Series & 100 Series?

[enjoy1604]

what's different between 200 Series & 100 Series?
I found it upgrade from the 20 lanes of PCIe Gen 3 in the Z170 to 24 lanes in the new performance Z270 chipset.
but 4 lanes what can do?

 

[Crashman]

what's different between 200 Series & 100 Series?
I found it upgrade from the 20 lanes of PCIe Gen 3 in the Z170 to 24 lanes in the new performance Z270 chipset.
but 4 lanes what can do?

The extra four lanes are offered due to the popularity of NVMe drives, which are PCIe 3.0 x4 based and can fit in either a PCIe or M.2 slot (depending on the design of the card).

The total number of HSIO devices also goes up from 26 to 30. But HSIO includes PCIe lanes, SATA ports, and USB 3.0 ports. So there's going to be big limitations anyway. And the chipset is connected to the CPU by a PCIe 3.0 x4 link called DMI 3.0, so all those extra ports are still sharing the same bandwidth to the CPU.

It doesn't look likely that the Z270 is even a new chip, though outsiders can't be certain. Instead, it appears that Intel has altered the BGA that the chip is mounted to, in order to reduce cross-talk between channels. And they did this by moving around a few power and ground pins. The Z170 was rumored to have four missing HSIO/PCIe, and Intel might have simply enabled them at the lowest level of firmware.

The best reason to buy a 200-series board for a 7000-series CPU is to be certain you're getting compatible firmware. But if you're buying a board for a 6000-series CPU, you can just update the firmware to support 7000-series processors later, if you ever choose to do so.

Motherboard manufacturers are also revising a bunch of features to make the 200-series boards more attractive to buyers than 100-series boards, so basically buy whatever makes you happy.