Intel Z390 Express Chipset Detailed

[MihaStar]

Chipset supports up to two MACs. You can either give those to two 1 GbE controllers, or one 1 GbE and the WLAN card. This is no different than previous Intel chipsets. The chipset puts out MAC_0 and MAC_1 (two MACs), and on boards with just one Intel GbE controller, motherboard designers wire it to MAC_1 (for whatever reason, maybe they misread the docs), which results in the driver adding a "#2" to the controller's name string in device manager.

As you said, you can add as many networking controllers (with their native MAC) as you want, via PCIe or USB.

Excuse me, but it seems you are a bit mistaken.
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...

 

[jabbadap]

Are those from the chipset though? That's the big news. Everyone and their dog has the ASMedia addon chips.

Funny that you said that. AMDs chipsets are made by ASMedia... And yes they have USB3.1 Gen2: 2 on x470, 2 on x370, 2 on b350, 1 on a320.

 

[R-T-B]

Funny that you said that. AMDs chipsets are made by ASMedia... And yes they have USB3.1 Gen2: 2 on x470, 2 on x370, 2 on b350, 1 on a320.

I'm well aware they were made by asmedia, however despite owning a few Ryzen boards, I guess the specs made it past me. Never been a big usb user...

 

[iO]

But how many USB ports do you actually get with that "up to 6x/10x" non-sense?

 

[TheLostSwede]

But how many USB ports do you actually get with that "up to 6x/10x" non-sense?

It depends on the board maker and how many flexible I/O's they dedicate to USB over other things.
Here's an example of the flexible I/O architecture:

As you can see, out of the 10 USB 3.0 ports in this case, four are shared with PCI Express and two of those four are also shared with Gigabit Ethernet.
Obviously some of this can be software switchable, but I don't know of any motherboard that shares a PCIe slot with a USB 3.x port. However, many boards share SATA with M.2 for example.

What we don't know at this point is how many flexible I/O "ports" that the Z390 chipset will have and thus it's hard to say what the potential outcome of ports could be.

 

[mat9v]

What happened to Thunderbolt 3.0?

 

[iO]

It depends on the board maker and how many flexible I/O's they dedicate to USB over other things.
Here's an example of the flexible I/O architecture:

As you can see, out of the 10 USB 3.0 ports in this case, four are shared with PCI Express and two of those four are also shared with Gigabit Ethernet.
Obviously some of this can be software switchable, but I don't know of any motherboard that shares a PCIe slot with a USB 3.x port. However, many boards share SATA with M.2 for example.

What we don't know at this point is how many flexible I/O "ports" that the Z390 chipset will have and thus it's hard to say what the potential outcome of ports could be.

Oh good info.
And looking at H370, which is the same silicon as Z390, the bandwidth seems to be enough for only a total of 4x Gen1 and 4x Gen2 ports. Plus all those 2.0 ports.

 

[IceShroom]

Considering there are currently a grand total of zero motherboard chipsets that offer native USB 3.1 gen2 ports, so adding 6 is pretty impressive. Especially when each requires the equivalent of a PCIe 3.0 x2 link.

You are wrong about Native USB 3.1(G2) support.
AMD's 300 serise chipsets have native USB 3.1(G2).
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_7_1800X/3.html
Also X470 has native USB 3.1(G2).

Also Intel's new H/B 300 serise chipsets also have native USB 3.1(G2)
Get your fact check before sperading misinformation.

 

[trparky]

Why do they still put USB 2 ports on motherboards? I don't get it.

Because a lot of wireless keyboards and mice don't play nice with USB 3.0.

See this Intel documentation PDF for details on this.

 

[Fx]

What the shit? WHO needs that much USB connectivity?!

 

[Octopuss]

What kind of devices actually use USB 3.1 (or even the gen2 something - this is seriously confusing).
Even my relatively new DSLR doesn't even support USB 3.0.

 

[ExV6k]

What kind of devices actually use USB 3.1 (or even the gen2 something - this is seriously confusing).
Even my relatively new DSLR doesn't even support USB 3.0.

My external Hard Drives does. It reaches 125MB/s sequential read speeds on a USB 3.0 port vs 26MB/s when plugged to a USB 2.0 port. And USB 3.1 G1 is basically the same as USB 3.0.

 

[Assimilator]

You are wrong about Native USB 3.1(G2) support.
AMD's 300 serise chipsets have native USB 3.1(G2).
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_7_1800X/3.html
Also X470 has native USB 3.1(G2).
View attachment 100981
Also Intel's new H/B 300 serise chipsets also have native USB 3.1(G2)
Get your fact check before sperading misinformation.

The fact that I had no idea that AMD boards have native USB 3.1 gen2 tells us how well AMD is doing at marketing their chipsets.

 

[JaymondoGB]

Totally pointless release. If it had a PLX chip, or some more chipset lanes, that would be different.

 

[Aquinus]

Of course it's using DMI 3.0 which is the equivalent of a 4 lane PCIe 3.0 slot. One 4-lane NVMe card and you'll get real close to saturating it with a single device.

Totally pointless release. If it had a PLX chip, or some more chipset lanes, that would be different.

It essentially is a PCIe switch. The problem is that it's trying to switch all of that across essentially 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes. So if you even did get 16 lanes out of the PCH (which you can,) you're still limited by the 4 lanes worth of bandwidth available to the PCH. Honestly, Intel should double the bandwidth between the CPU and PCH if they really want it to be useful and for people to not always want to have NVMe cards wired directly to the PCIe lanes on the CPU.

 

[R-T-B]

I thought a port automatically works in USB 2 mode if you plug a mouse or something in it.

It does (usually, anyways). But in the case of addon chips, it doesn't give the bandwidth allocated to it via pcie lanes back either.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Oh good info.
And looking at H370, which is the same silicon as Z390, the bandwidth seems to be enough for only a total of 4x Gen1 and 4x Gen2 ports. Plus all those 2.0 ports.

Anandtech seems to suggest there will be 30 HSIO lanes, same as the Z/H370, although configured differently. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12750/intel-releases-z390-chipset-product-information
The USB 2.0 ports are not part of the HSIO, as USB 2.0 is not considered high speed any more.

 

[Assimilator]

Anandtech seems to suggest there will be 30 HSIO lanes, same as the Z/H370, although configured differently. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12750/intel-releases-z390-chipset-product-information
The USB 2.0 ports are not part of the HSIO, as USB 2.0 is not considered high speed any more.

If that's true, then it's pretty sad because it means that all Z390 adds over Z370 is the ability to allocate some of those HSIO lanes to USB 3g2. In other words, now motherboard manufacturers will be able to choose between two USB 3g1 ports or one USB 3g2... end result is that if they go for the latter, you end up with fewer ports in total. So ASMedia USB controllers are here to stay it would seem.

 

[TheLostSwede]

If that's true, then it's pretty sad because it means that all Z390 adds over Z370 is the ability to allocate some of those HSIO lanes to USB 3g2. In other words, now motherboard manufacturers will be able to choose between two USB 3g1 ports or one USB 3g2... end result is that if they go for the latter, you end up with fewer ports in total. So ASMedia USB controllers are here to stay it would seem.

Why do you assume that one 10Gbps port will use up two 5Gbps ports? We have yet to see the actual HSIO configuration of any of Intel's chipsets with 10Gbps USB, or at least I've been unable to find any specifics on it.
It makes sense from a logical standpoint of how we know things currently work, but maybe Intel made some changes to the flexible I/O.

Maybe Intel gimped it and limited to one PCIe 3.0 lane so we end up 8Gbps USB instead of 10Gbps. Would anyone really notice the difference? Even more so, if your current 10Gbps USB host controller is only connected to one PCIe 3.0 lane, you'd have the same limitation.

Looking at one of the few benchmarks I could find, it looks like this is exactly what they've done.

Source: https://www.kitguru.net/components/...og-strix-h370-f-gaming-motherboard-review/10/

 

[las]

Yes, lets get another generation using Sky Lake arch (4th time)

5th release on 14nm ...

Cannon Lake 10nm w. AVX512 where are you?

 

[Totally]

You prefer no USB ports, stupid sound and slow networking then?

Going by their last MacBook, Apple thinks people do.

 

[Space Lynx]

You prefer no USB ports, stupid sound and slow networking then?

lol if you think intel is going to give you sound I feel bad for you

My audio setup: Schiit Lyr 3 tube amp - $565
headphone dac - modi multibit - $270
and my headphones, ZMF Blackwood Purpleheart wood - $750

thats good sound. ;p

 

[las]

So this was what Z370 should have been.

 

[User !]

Just wish the z370 can with the support for 8-cores

 

[voltage]

This is a little funny. Intel's been sandbagging the USB ports!

oh how i missed the phrase "sandbagging"

lol

Thanks for the laugh!