Thursday, February 23rd 2012
Intel Z77 Chipset Motherboards to Start Selling in Early-April
Regardless of whether you'll be able to get an "Ivy Bridge" Core processor till the second week of April, motherboards that are compatible with it out of the box, based on Intel's Z77 chipset (successor to Z68), will start selling in early-April. Sources told OCWorkbench that most motherboard vendors have in fact begun shipping orders to their distributors, while some are waiting for the green light. Motherboards based on the Z77 chipset feature LGA1155 CPU socket, are compatible with today's "Sandy Bridge" Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processors; and tomorrow's "Ivy Bridge" ones, out of the box. The new chipset offers features such as some native USB 3.0 ports, and support for certain Ivy Bridge-exclusive features, beyond which they're functionally identical to 6-series. Enthusiasts might not find the need to upgrade their motherboards to use Ivy Bridge, if their current motherboards have BIOS updates that let them support the new processors.
Source:
OCWorkbench
5 Comments on Intel Z77 Chipset Motherboards to Start Selling in Early-April
I'm in the market for an additional system. I'm interested in an Ivy Bridge Core i7 3770 / Z77, Snady Bridge-E Core i7 3930K / X79 or Sandy Bridge-E Core i7 3820 / X79 based system. One of the problems I have with this is that the features on some Z77 boards seem more advanced then X79 boards. It's like X79 is in need of an update especially considering X79 is supposed to be the high-end platform.
And the single socket ain't going to happen until they review their current market plans as it was only a "couple" of years ago they came out with the whole "tick" "tock" platform/CPU cycle thingy... :o