Clicking the image to see the high-res version shows that the six PCIe slots are electrically x16/x1/x16/x1/x8/x8 with "M.2 x4" printed on the board. It would make sense for them to put the M.2 x4 on the MCH since it's an SLI board. They have to presume people want x16/x16/x8 and M.2 at the same time. The board could also run x16/x8/x8/x8 and the M.2 slot at the same time. If you only want one GPU in there, you could add four other cards (1x1 and (3x4 or 3x8)) and the GPU will still use x16.
Now if only they'd support x16/x16/x4/x4 ... Then I could run two GPUs and three M.2 sticks (or something else). None of the X79 boards supported switching the remaining x8 slot into 2x4 slots.
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10 Comments
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sjakti - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Beautiful, exciting board: can't wait for Haswell-E reviews.Ian, heads up: the article's text is duplicated.
Ian Cutress - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Thanks for the heads up, some odd issue with copy paste. Looked fine when I clicked 'Post' :)R3MF - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Socket 2011 sytems's have 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes off the CPU, right?Any chance will get an implementation with 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes off the CPU instead of PCIe 2.0 of the MCH?
Eidigean - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Yes, Socket 2011 has 40 lanes.Clicking the image to see the high-res version shows that the six PCIe slots are electrically x16/x1/x16/x1/x8/x8 with "M.2 x4" printed on the board. It would make sense for them to put the M.2 x4 on the MCH since it's an SLI board. They have to presume people want x16/x16/x8 and M.2 at the same time. The board could also run x16/x8/x8/x8 and the M.2 slot at the same time. If you only want one GPU in there, you could add four other cards (1x1 and (3x4 or 3x8)) and the GPU will still use x16.
Eidigean - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Now if only they'd support x16/x16/x4/x4 ... Then I could run two GPUs and three M.2 sticks (or something else). None of the X79 boards supported switching the remaining x8 slot into 2x4 slots.Eidigean - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
I'd actually prefer this, so that Thunderbolt 2 could use the 4 lanes from the MCH and have 2x4 slots for two sticks of M.2 from the CPU.mapesdhs - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Does anyone know what the max RAM of X99 will be? I was hoping for at least 256GB.
Ian.
HellzHavoc - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
128GBHisDivineOrder - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Sad how much more interesting Haswell-E is to anything Intel's released for the mainstream in years.Ahnilated - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
I so agree. I love computer hardware and there hasn't been anything to excite me in years. :(