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Leaked slide confirms PCI-E 3.0 for Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs

Published on 29th March 2011 by Paul Goodhead

The leaked slide appears to confirm that Intel's forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs will support PCI-E 3.0.

An allegedly leaked slide from an Intel presentation detailing its forthcoming 22nm Ivy Bridge LGA1155 processors and chipset has appeared, courtesy of SemiAccurate.

If genuine, the slide confirms that the new range of processors will be PCI-E 3.0 compliant. Like Intel's current LGA1155 CPUs, they will still supply just 16 lanes, but each lane will now offer 1GB/sec of bandwidth in each direction as opposed to the 500MB/sec offered by PCI-E 2.0 lanes.

That sounds good on paper, of course, but it’s not likely to make much difference to your current graphics card’s performance; even top-end cards currently struggle to max out the bandwidth on offer from PCI-E 2.0 slots.

In addition to the PCI-E upgrade, the slide also says the new processors will also include a refresh of the Intel HD graphics core built into the chip. However, it's yet to be seen whether this refresh will take the form of a simple speed bump made possible by the smaller production process or a complete redesign.

The slide also seems to back up a previous leaked presentation which allegedly confirmed native USB 3.0 compatibility from the Panther Point chipset that will accompany the new processors. Surprisingly, it also states that the chipset will still only provide two native SATA 6Gbps ports, rather than upgrading to the full six SATA 6Gbps ports supported by current AMD systems.

Are you looking forward to the next generation of LGA1155 CPUs, or does Sandy Bridge do everything you want? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

29 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

Autti 29th March 2011, 13:16

6 sata 6gbps USB3 and PCI-e 3.0 would be a LOT of bandwidth to control, perhaps thats why its only 2 sata 6gbps?

Also, isn't LGA 2011 meant to have PCI-e 3.0

srx08 29th March 2011, 13:23

This is for LGA 1155. Ivy Bridge is just the die shrink of the sandy bridge architecture.

SpAceman 29th March 2011, 13:31

Excitement! I was going to hold off a little while longer, being a poor student with a huge loan and all, but I am so tempted to put together an Ivy Bridge build when it comes out.

Xyllian 29th March 2011, 13:55

Isnt the Bulldozer chipset from AMD supposed to have 4 usb 3.0 and 8 sata 6gb/s natively?

This chipset seems rather unimpressive as even the latest cards have trouble maxing out the PCIe 2.0 x8 ports. Lots of usb 3.0 and sata 6gb/s would be much more impressive.

Tattysnuc 29th March 2011, 14:00

Does this mean that we will be able to push more power through the motherboard rather than having these additional cables to the GFX cards that has become the norm....

l3v1ck 29th March 2011, 14:07

2 SATA 6gb/s is a bit tight. I'd have though 4 would be a reasonable minimum for future chips.

meandmymouth 29th March 2011, 14:14

When is Ivy Bridge *very roughly* expected?

thetrashcanman 29th March 2011, 14:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by meandmymouth
When is Ivy Bridge *very roughly* expected?

Q1 2012 I believe

edit: Autti, yes Lga 2011 is meant to be the first outing for PCI-e 3.0

Xyllian, with the die shrink from 40nm to 28nm coming end of this year/next year we should see performance increase in gpu's dramatically.

deadstoned 29th March 2011, 14:19

Its expected at the end of this year or Q1 of next year. I'm in the same boat as SpAceman, I'll try and hold off on SandyBridge and go for Ivy Bridge. I'll get my monies worth out of my Q6600 for the time being :) and upgrade to a 560 GTX for Bf3 from my 4870 512mb. Just wish the board had more SATA 3 :P

Guinevere 29th March 2011, 14:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tattysnuc
Does this mean that we will be able to push more power through the motherboard rather than having these additional cables to the GFX cards that has become the norm....

No, you don't get any more power overhead from using PCI-E 3.0

Xir 29th March 2011, 14:54

Ah...USB 3.0
Have we noticed, finally?

true_gamer 29th March 2011, 15:40

What's the point in the extra bandwidth and faster gpu's now, when we can max out every game with today's hardware?

So until we have games like Crysis 1 to push are hardware, then its pointless upgrading.

("Looks at Crysis 2 with disappointment!")

Tangster 29th March 2011, 16:23

I think Nvidia and AMD would prefer PCI-E with more power instead, perhaps 300W worth. :)

DbD 29th March 2011, 16:51

Difficult to get too excited.

Any gamer will have a discrete gpu so who cares if the on-chip one is a bit faster. The cpu is obviously going to clock a little higher, and have a little more cache but that's not going to make a huge difference.

The only thing that would tempt me to move to it is if they offer some cheap 6 or 8 core variants on 1155.

play_boy_2000 29th March 2011, 17:21

I think Intel is shooting itself in the foot by offering PCI-e 3. The 2 major selling points of s1366 and eventually s2011 are increased memory channels/bandwidth and more PCIe lanes for SLI/xfire. It's already been proved that the sandybridge memory controller makes a mockery of the one in Bloomfield (although I'm sure s2011 is going to have all those improvements and more), so all thats left is more PCIe lanes. Assuming AMD/nvidia can get some PCIe 3 cards out the door, an 8x 8x split should prove to be a fairly popular motherboard layout, which is going to take a nice bite out of intels high end sales methinks.

On a side note, I wonder if low/mid range graphics cards are going to switch to 8x only? If it saved $10-15 off the cost of a card (through smaller die, less complex PCB and less design time) I think it would make sense.... no?

aron311 29th March 2011, 17:24

The i5-2500k is pretty killer, I just took the plunge from an e8400. It's night and day. IMO there's nothing really in Ivy Bridge to look forward to apart from decreased power draw which has already been massively improved in the 2500k over the i5-750 / 760 along with a nice speed bump for the same money.

Any 1155 board should do tbh from a decent manufacturer, one thing I noticed though is alt+tab out of high end games, BF BC2 especially, with 8GB memory instead of 4GB is now instant. Try and find 2x 4GB 1600MHz CL9 modules for about £80 as anything more seems to be a waste of money looking at speed tests, put it towards an SSD!

HourBeforeDawn 29th March 2011, 17:28

have we even come close to saturating PCI-E 2.0 yet? but I suppose thats just how tech is we dont use it to its full potential before we replace it with something else.

Parge 29th March 2011, 17:32

I honestly can't see myself upgrading my i5-750 until the next architecture (tock) in 2012. Nothing I do stresses my current CPU to 100% yet!

Floyd 29th March 2011, 17:41

I would only be excited about the PCI-E 3.0 if it provided more power through the slot so we dont have to have power cords to our GPUs.

PureSilver 29th March 2011, 17:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parge
I honestly can't see myself upgrading my i5-750 until the next architecture (tock) in 2012. Nothing I do stresses my current CPU to 100% yet!

+1. It looks to me like I'm going to get five solid years minimum out of my i7 920, which is about double what I expected...

schmidtbag 29th March 2011, 17:58

does anyone find it ironic that intel is a lead developer in most technologies such as usb, pci-e, sata, ethernet, etc yet amd is the one that not only releases products with those features first but releases them in greater numbers?
i'm aware there are some amd chipsets where the sata3 isn't as fast as advertised, but that only applies to specific boards

NethLyn 29th March 2011, 18:00

Only having Sandy Bridge in the lead for a year sounds like what they did to the Q6600 ie "It's our best ever but grab it while you can".

Anyone needing a new PC at the start of next year, it sounds great, but what's on the market now is hard to resist when the motherboards are working and you could just get a USB 3.0 add-in card to get more ports if they even mattered to you.

Ross1 29th March 2011, 20:32

While thats nice and all, we could have done with some more bandwidth on the p67 boards. Take the p8p67 pro from asus, which I just bought. You have the graphics card on PCI-e x16_1, obviously. Now, I also have a pci-e x4 raid controller. My options are to run it on pci-e x16_2, where the board will then limit the graphics card to x8. The other option is to put it on PCI-e x16_3, where it either runs at x1, or runs at x4 but disables two pci-ex1 slots (I use one of them for a dvb-t2 card), USB3 and esata.

Lots of options, but not enough bandwidth for a single graphics card, a tv card and a x4 raid controller. This is the p67 line as well, its not like its the h67 budget line.

schmidtbag 29th March 2011, 21:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ross1
While thats nice and all, we could have done with some more bandwidth on the p67 boards. Take the p8p67 pro from asus, which I just bought. You have the graphics card on PCI-e x16_1, obviously. Now, I also have a pci-e x4 raid controller. My options are to run it on pci-e x16_2, where the board will then limit the graphics card to x8. The other option is to put it on PCI-e x16_3, where it either runs at x1, or runs at x4 but disables two pci-ex1 slots (I use one of them for a dvb-t2 card), USB3 and esata.

Lots of options, but not enough bandwidth for a single graphics card, a tv card and a x4 raid controller. This is the p67 line as well, its not like its the h67 budget line.

well, this doesn't apply to all boards. my amd setup has 4 pcie 16x slots with triple crossfire support. it can do 16x16 or 16x8x8. the 4th slot is fixed at 4x. the board also has two 1x slots and from what i could see, you can't disable any of them from bios. so your board probably just has a very limited pcie bus.

like i said in my earlier post, why is it that intel invents/researches this stuff yet amd is the one that takes the most advantage of them?

borandi 29th March 2011, 23:02

PCI-E or PCIe? Officially, it's PCIe.

dicobalt 30th March 2011, 04:54

I might upgrade to an 8 core 1155 Ivy Bridge if they become available. Right now I am very happy with my 2500K @ 4.3GHz.

wuyanxu 30th March 2011, 07:47

SemiAccurate.

Nuff said.

Hakuren 30th March 2011, 14:54

Well PCI-Ex 3.0 certainly won't hurt for LGA2011. Of course it will be some time until we see something saturating x16 slot in version 2.0, not to mention v. 3.0. But PCI-Ex is not only VGA business. It is also RAID controller business for example. And v.3.0 x4 slot will provide as much bandwidth as x8 v.2.0. Which is a bonus because often proper slots are at premium on most motherboards (no matter desktop or server oriented). With version 3.0 I can see manufacturers returning to x4 slots with next generation of RAID controllers. 5-6 x4 v.3.0 slots are much simpler to implement that 5-6 x8 in version 2.0 (additional e.g. NF200 chips are required). Less NF200 chips, less heat, less power consumption, a lot of saved $$$. A lot of positives... apart from nVidia being pissed off. LOL

As for me, give me some LGA 2011. Now!

play_boy_2000 30th March 2011, 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hakuren
With version 3.0 I can see manufacturers returning to x4 slots with next generation of RAID controllers. 5-6 x4 v.3.0 slots

A 4x link on PCIe 2.0 is more than enough (for a HDD based array), so after PCIe 3.0 has had a few years to settle in, I'd actually expect a move back to 1x for all but the highest end enterprise gear (with SSDs in mind).