Sunday, May 13th 2018
Intel Z390 Express Chipset Detailed
Intel released a product brief of its premium mainstream-desktop (MSDT) chipset, the Z390 Express. Positioned above the Z370 Express, the chipset has an exhaustive feature-set. It supports current 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" processors, and is ready for the next-generation. Like all other 300-series chipsets, the Z390 interfaces with the LGA1151 processor over a DMI 3.0 chipset-bus. Much like the Z370, it features 24 downstream PCI-Express gen 3.0 lanes. Its storage setup remains unchanged from the Z370 - six SATA 6 Gbps ports with AHCI and RAID support; and up to three 32 Gbps M.2/U.2 connectors.
The differences begin with the chipset's integrated USB connectivity. The Z390 Express directly puts out six 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, and ten 5 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 1 ports. If that's not a lot, it also puts out fourteen USB 2.0 ports (a total of 30 USB ports). Another major feature is Intel SmartSound technology, which the document specifies as an "audio/voice offload" DSP. This should, in theory, reduce the CPU's load in processing the audio stack. At the physical level it's still the company's "Azalia" HD audio bus wired to an audio CODEC with close to zero native signal processing. Perhaps some of that processing is done inside the chipset. The concept appears to be borrowed from edge-computing, and triggered by the rise in voice-command interface, so the chipset can natively process speech-to-text conversions.
With the Z390 Express, Intel is also updating the platform's networking feature-set. The chipset supports a 1 GbE MAC interface, and recommends motherboard manufacturers to include an Intel Wireless-AC 9560 card, with 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5. Almost every Z390 motherboard will feature wireless networking, and most of them will include Intel's recommended WLAN card pairing. No new CPU overclocking features are detailed in the document.
The differences begin with the chipset's integrated USB connectivity. The Z390 Express directly puts out six 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, and ten 5 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 1 ports. If that's not a lot, it also puts out fourteen USB 2.0 ports (a total of 30 USB ports). Another major feature is Intel SmartSound technology, which the document specifies as an "audio/voice offload" DSP. This should, in theory, reduce the CPU's load in processing the audio stack. At the physical level it's still the company's "Azalia" HD audio bus wired to an audio CODEC with close to zero native signal processing. Perhaps some of that processing is done inside the chipset. The concept appears to be borrowed from edge-computing, and triggered by the rise in voice-command interface, so the chipset can natively process speech-to-text conversions.
50 Comments on Intel Z390 Express Chipset Detailed
I think you need to look at that diagram again, as the SMBus is a management bus.
You can obviously add as many Ethernet ports as you wish via PCIe.
Also, for those that want to read Intel's PDF, have a look here - www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/chipsets/desktop-chipsets/z390-chipset-brief.html
As you said, you can add as many networking controllers (with their native MAC) as you want, via PCIe or USB.
There's no way you could connect a wired Ethernet MAC to that.
Also, Gigabit over wireless is still just marketing.
So pro gamers will end up sounding like cattle auctioneers IRL (combining keyboard+mouse+voice for that competitive edge).
There is a reason these things are now incredibly rare and valuable... most were never purchased and ended up in dumpsters.
Quoted from TPU.
Interestingly enough, seems the content of said article has been stolen by a YouTube channel called "Mukesh Tech Studios" - might want to look into that, @btarunr.
Also, why mixture of different USB 3 types? Why not just the newest one?
The picture today is much different - USB 3.0 is mature, the 3rd-party controller market is dominated by ASMedia who actually makes good stuff, and drivers aren't terrible CPU-eating crap. But like the even older myth that USB is slow and can't do key rollover (it can, just not more than 6 keys, and how do you even press more than 5 keys with one hand?) and so you need PS/2, the "USB 3.0 sucks for peripherals" myth persists.USB 3.1 gen2 supplies twice the bandwidth of gen1, hence the differentiation. I don't know if there are manufacturing differences involved in the physical ports, but I'm certain the signalling traces on the motherboard have to be more robust to supply the required bandwidth, and of course the chipset and CPU have to be able to account for the higher throughput. So it's cost, and when most people don't even have devices that take advantage of USB 3 gen2, it just doesn't make sense to go full gen2.Eh?
Here's a small quote from the Intel GbE .inf driver
===
E155ANC.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I218-LM"
E1559NC.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I218-V"
E15A0NC.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I218-LM"
E15A1NC.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I218-V"
E15A2NC.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (3) I218-LM"
E15A3NC.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (3) I218-V"
===
As you can see, the mark "(2)" appears in the device manager just because of the DevID=15A0h (for example) of the integrated GbE.
In fact, the reference DevID values for the EEPROM content in any image supplied from Intel is 1502h, while 155Ah and 1559h are reserved, maybe for some OEMs, etc.
But it's quite easy to modify the EEPROM values and make your motherboard controller have the DevID=155A, and the Device Manager will change the name.
Historically the chipsets have only one integrated GbE MAC for a long time, it usually resides at Bus0, Device19, Func0.
So, I don't know where is the second mysterious GbE MAC located...