GIGABYTE 6 Series Motherboards - Images & Specifications

[wazza300]

socket 2011 is x58 replacement,i hope it supports quad channel memory

[Lsdmeasap]

Yeap, this series 6 is to replace 1156, 2011 will replace 1366 and will be triple channel or quad

[anit77]

I would be nice to get native sata3 with triple or quad channel ddr3 in a 1366 socket. I don't like the idea of dropping $600-800 to get it vs just $200-300 for a MB & maybe a stick of ram. There will be life for i7 processors for 2 to 3 more years. There isn't much out there that can push them to their limit now.

[Lsdmeasap]

That may be coming, Intel has not said yet, I hope so!

[loga8n]

so building a new system now was pretty much useless???
when will the new 1366 i7 replacements come in, the ones posted here looks nice and do they outperform an x58 system now?

i wish intel would do something like amd, where we can use existing old cpu and use them in new motherboards

hey it seems like gigabyte dropped their useless sata ports on these new boards
very nice new boards and color scheme , will anyone ever use that many usb and sata ports at all

thumbs up for gigabyte, king of boards

[wazza300]

socket 2011 should be out around june,i think they will perform better due to running cooler 32nm,but plenty of life left in the i7's yet,if you were planning on selling your x58 nows the time just before christmas

[Lsdmeasap]

I doubt these will do any better than an X58, which will be around for quite some time still.

These will be better than 1156 though, but X58 users should wait for the next socket not this one.

[Psycho101]

The reason Intel are moving to different sockets is due to the FTC court judjement that's designed to protect the likes of NVidia, AMD (GPU arm) and VIA. They have been ordered to integrate the PCIe bus component on all their consumer CPU's for the next 6 years. This doesn't apply to tech currently in production although they went ahead and started with 1156 anyway. See here for more info SemiAccurate :: Intel settles with the FTC, Via and Nvidia win big

USB3 is also being delayed (native ICH support that is) until Intel release and try to establish its Light Peak interface.

32nm fab alone isn't going to give any huge performance leaps, it's here already on Clarkdale and the newer i7's (930, 950 etc). It's architectural changes that will tip the performance scale. From what I've read so far, performance isn't going to be a huge leap, not like it was from P4 Netburst to Core 2 and probably not even as large as from Core 2 to Nehalem. They have added code for optimizing media encoding etc, but only in the form of MMX like add-ons. Even those on LGA 1156 probably won't be missing much. This is especially true when you considder that altering Bclk on Sandy Bridge will bring the system crashing down hard with anything more than a ~10MHz boost (just a guess, but an educated one). Anyone with even a mildly over clocked i3/i5 is going to have to buy a K series CPU to even see the same kind of performance in many tasks.

Until the next generation of consoles is released which is anywhere from 2011-2014 depending where you listen to, there won't even be a need for i3/i5/i7 on current sockets. Even an Athlon 64 X2 is enough to game at the moment, and that's 2 generations behind in AMD's time line (Phenom II > Phenom > AMD64). Same goes for Intel, however their P4 Netburst CPU's ARE too long in the tooth. A decent Core 2 Duo is still plenty for most games and a C2Q is still an ideal gaming chip.

Those heavily into audio and video may like any new features on the next gen of Intel CPU, but as we know, menial tasks like converting to Youtube format/Youtube HD, MP3, WMA etc etc can be accelerated by the GPU and is many many times faster at it than this generation CPU's, so the performance advantage is already being utilized in most cases. With the advances of GPGPU, OpenCL and CUDA, AMD and NVidia could very well render many of the improvements obsolete.

I'm trying to remain optomistic, but as we already have two Intel platforms that are currently being under utilized by many users (me included) do we really need another so soon? I really hope it's not a similar scenario to when Intel first released MMX enabled CPU's. What a waste of time that was. Later on, software caught up a little and then MMX became a requitrement, but that took over a year.

Unfortunately I beleive that unless Intel really do pull something out of the hat (and AMD too with Bulldozer) we're going ot have to wait for other aspects of technology to catch up before we see some real benefit to a dramatically new architecture. That's probably going to be either just before or just after PlayStation 4 / XBox 720 (or what ever). Other users, ie audio, video maths modeling etc may be lucky enough to benefit before then. There are other bottlenecks that need addressing before we start replacing a CPU with too much RAM bandwidth already (never mind Quad Channel, Tripple channel is underutilized by home users).

I'd much rather have a HDD that's as fast as DDR-SDRAM, has access times measured in ns and never forgets.... That's likely a long way off, but I can dream.

[Acebmxer]

Psycho's fingers must be bleeding after typing all that but that's a lot of good info and good points.

[Lsdmeasap]

I agree, but it's a lot of nice info!

Psycho is always such a knowledgeable and articulate writer. I wish I could write with such skills, he should do product reviews!