Tuesday, February 4th 2020
GIGABYTE Lists AMD B550 and Intel Z490 Motherboards
Thanks to the findings of VideoCardz, we have information that GIGABYTE has listed its upcoming motherboards for AMD and Intel platforms. Starting with AMD's upcoming mid-range chipset, the B550 model is supposed to bring PCIe 4.0 connectivity options to lower-priced motherboard variants. So far, only high-end chipset versions like X570 had PCIe 4.0 support, while the mid-range option was lacking. GIGABYTE has prepared a total of six B550 AORUS models, along with a GAMING series which is supposed to be a tier below AORUS models. The B550 chipset will span all motherboard sizes, including ATX, Micro-ATX, and Mini-ITX.
In the EEC listing, GIGABYTE also submitted Intel's upcoming Z490 motherboards for Comet Lake-S CPUs. In the listing, we see a total of 15 motherboards listed with an unusable entry. Again the W480 chipset appears, which is meant to power workstation motherboards. This chipset will go inside a new motherboard lineup called the "VISION" series. While we don't know what this new series brings, we know that both the workstation enabled W480 chipset and regular Z490 chipset will be a part of it.
Source:
VideoCardz
In the EEC listing, GIGABYTE also submitted Intel's upcoming Z490 motherboards for Comet Lake-S CPUs. In the listing, we see a total of 15 motherboards listed with an unusable entry. Again the W480 chipset appears, which is meant to power workstation motherboards. This chipset will go inside a new motherboard lineup called the "VISION" series. While we don't know what this new series brings, we know that both the workstation enabled W480 chipset and regular Z490 chipset will be a part of it.
56 Comments on GIGABYTE Lists AMD B550 and Intel Z490 Motherboards
Beyond that, the only thing B550 is likely to bring is innate 1 x16 4.0 and 1 x4 4.0 slots for the first NVMe drive and the first slot (for GPUs), but will probably default to 3.0 for any remaining slots. It's going to be weird considering that it's basically a half-step up from X470 motherboards, going from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0 on the 1st NVMe and GPU slot and PCIe 2.0 to 3.0 on the remaining slots. The only things that benefit from 4.0 currently are NVMe SSDs and 4x NVMe cards, and the oddball 5500/5500XT 4GB due to the lack of VRAM.
Also APUs don't really matter that much in this market, they are mainly sold in Laptops or really low-end office-PC. Noone in their right mind would chose an APU for gaming. BTW Renoir APUs will be the same for all applications, just with different TDP and clocks.
EDIT: @TechLurker: Yeah, just your wish is impossible, one lane will always be one lane, regardless of Gen. The only way for this is to use a PCIe-Switch-Controller, like the ones from PLX, which aren't really use anymore since PLX was bought by broadcom. They were used on a few occasions for a similiar job, just the other way round: Connecting multiple PCIe2.0x1 or x2 devices to one PCIe1.1x4 (Asus P55), Switching between many PCIe2.0x1 or x2-devices (using more than 4 Lanes total, like 6-8 lanes) connected to one x4-Port on many S1155-Boards because of to few Lanes on PCH, or connecting 2-4 Gen2/Gen3-GPU via 2x16 or 4x8 on an CPU with only one x16 (many very highend S1155/S1150-Boards, every Dual-GPU-Card).
They directly go against the Intel iGPU equipped office boxes.
Those Corporate sales are monstrous compared to the enthusiast market.
But I'm less concerned about the VRM. Z390 mATX MBs have all the goodies - wifi, good cooling, lot's of I/O ports and front panel headers... X570 got pooped on really hard in that matter, especially considering it's superior in specs in almost every way to Intel chip.
If you're not hard-core overclocking the VRMs won't have to be so robust, and the chipset will likely not require dedicated active cooling.
As of now I'm running a B350 with a Zen 3600 and 3200 Mhz RAM. I'd upgrade, for sure.