Intel 7-Series Ivy Bridge Chipsets Get Detailed

In the first quarter of 2012, Intel will unveil its next-generation Core-series processors based on the Ivy Bridge architecture and together with these chips, the company will also release a new range of chipsets which have just been detailed in a series of leaked slides.

Together with the Ivy Bridge CPUs, Intel's 7-series motherboard chipsets will form the Maho Bay desktop platform, and the chip maker plans to split this PCH range into two different groups.

The first of these will target the consumer market and includes three platform controller hubs (PCHs) dubbed Z77, Z75 and H77, which feature similar specifications apart from some minor changes.

The most feature rich chipset of the three, the Z77, will packs four USB 3.0 ports, two SATA 6Gbps, four SATA 3Gbps connectors and can split the 16 PCI Express lanes available from the CPU into a pair of x8 lanes or into an x8 + x4 + x4 configuration.

The two other PCH controllers in the consumer series will also receive support for SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0, but won't provide the same PCI Express lane flexibility, while the H77 will also drop overclocking support.

On the enterprise side of the fence, Intel's 7-series chipset lineup will be comprised out of three solutions, the Q77, Q75 and B75, all of these featuring support for Ivy Bridge integrated graphics and a legacy PCI slot.

Support for version 11 of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology will be available in both of these chipset series.

In addition to the details regarding these PCH controllers, the Intel documents published by XFastest also unveil some information regarding the Ivy Bridge processors.

These seem to confirm that Ivy Bridge CPUs will be released into the Core 3000-series and that they will feature DirectX 11 integrated graphics and support for up to three displays.

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