Gigabyte readies the budget-friendly AORUS Master built upon the B650E chipset. Offering a robust 16+2+2 VRM configuration, DDR5 support, PCIe Gen5 and four M.2 Gen5 sockets, Gigabyte is setting the playing field for things to come. Does the B650E AORUS Master have what it takes to win over the consumers? Follow along as we find out!
Thank you for this thorough review. I would kindly request another shot of the red area to expose HDMI chip feeding the port from iGPU.
Gigabyte claims that their HDMI 2.1 FRL port can output 7680x4320@60Hz and HDR, but without bit depth or other details. 8K/60hz can be done with either 32 Gbps (8-bit 4:2:0), 40 Gbps (10-bit 4:2:0) or 48 Gbps signal (12-bit 4:2:0). It is not clear what exactly they offer here.
If I may suggest for all future motherboard reviews, please expose
iGPU capability in practice, i.e. HDMI and DP/USB-C chips near those ports, so that we try to find out what exactly is offered to consumers from iGPU. This is important, as it will tell us how much of iGPU capability motherboard vendors decide to implement and expose, which in turn, will tell us what kind of monitor we can connect to hybrid iGPU-GPU.
AMD officially says that iGPU from 7000 CPUs support both HDMI 2.1 FRL up to 48 Gbps, DSC with it, and DisplayPort 2.0 at 40 Gbps, and DSC with it.
Several vendors have nicely implemented 32Gbps HDMI ports, including this one, but so far no vendor has decided to expose DP 2.0 at 40 Gbps form iGPU via either DP port or USB-C port by DP 2.0 Alt Mode.
AMD has officially certified DP 2.0 port at 40 Gbps with VESA on Rembrandt APU with RDNA2 graphics. 7000 Raphael CPUs have similar media engine within RDNA2 capability. Any motherboard vendor wanting to expose DP 2.0 port from CPU's iGPU, would need to apply to VESA to receive their certification. We are curious whether any vendor has an intention to do this on a desktop system. Much appreciated.
