Upgrade Path to Ivy Bridge

[Caveman]

Pardon if my terminology/timelines aren't perfect... Been keeping the ear over discussions but skipped the detail...

My upgrade target date is late this year. My understanding is that this will open up 2 new upgrade options: next gen SB on 2011 enthusist platform and Bulldozer.

How does Ivy Bridge (new transistor announcement) fit into all this?

Will the Ivy Bridge CPUs be able to use the new enthusiast 2011 Mobos coming out?

 

[Arkadrel]

Fudzilla rumors said 1H of 2012, but he was more or less just going by 1year from sandy bridge release.

I think others have said that was being optimistic and that it ll probably be abit more delayed than that.


So Late this year (2011)..... No way you can get Ivy Bridge, thats way earlier than anyone seems to think possible.

So Sandy or Bulldozer, seem to be your choices.

 

[Edrick]

Will the Ivy Bridge CPUs be able to use the new enthusiast 2011 Mobos coming out?

Yes, but most likely not right away. Thinking more like 2H 2012 for that.

 

[Zap]

Intel’s Roadmap: Ivy Bridge, Panther Point, and SSDs

Kristian summarizes the known main differences between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. Basically the base architecture remains the same (Intel's Tick-Tock Model). It is primarily a die shrink to 22nm with of course the 3D "Tri-Gate" transistor tech that was the big news earlier this week. There are some slight tweaks, however, with slightly better IGP, possibly larger cache, faster interfaces to memory/PCIe and possibly higher clocks.

What accompanies Ivy Bridge is the Panther Point chipset. Most will be under socket 1155 for mainstream, while socket 2011 is the high end.

Ivy Bridge will be available in both sockets. In theory, you can also put Ivy Bridge in current socket 1155 motherboards as well, for an upgrade path which Intel hasn't given us since socket 775.

If you are upgrading later this year and want to go Intel, my prediction for platform of choice would be socket 1155 with the Z68 chipset as that would (in theory) lend itself to an Ivy Bridge upgrade plus the majority of the features. It will only lose out on the following chipset level features:

Third IGP output - Currently Sandy Bridge + chipsets only support dual displays using the IGP, but Ivy Bridge + Panther Point will support triple monitors using the IGP. Of course if you don't use the IGP or don't use three monitors at the same time, this feature is of little concern.

PCIe 3.0 - Doubles current PCIe 2.0 bandwidth per lane. Perhaps helpful to those who use multi-GPUs, but probably of little concern to everyone else for the next couple years.

USB 3.0 - Panther Point finally integrates it into the Intel chipset for socket 1155, but NOT for socket 2011. Likely it is because socket 2011 comes out sooner, while Intel has another quarter to work on socket 1155 Panther Point. Note that it will be like the SATA 6G ports in the current P67/H67 chipsets in that there will be some USB 3.0 and some USB 2.0 ports. At least USB 3.0 will now (in 2012) be universal. In the meantime most socket 1155 motherboards (except for the bottom scrapers) will likely have USB 3.0 onboard, provided by a third party chipset.

Other than these three things, Panther Point looks to be similar on paper to what we are expecting from the upcoming Z68 chipset. Of course I'm just speculating based on what I've read online (disclaimers apply). Those who know for sure aren't talking due to being under NDA. Since I'm no longer in the industry, I can feel free to speculate on future products. :hmm:

 

[betasub]

^ I like that kinda speculation, Zap - thanks!