Sometimes when introducing a brand new collection of CPUs, together with their accompanying platform, Intel will publish a platform overview diagram (or the very comparable “Chipset Block Diagram“) that lays out the entire hyperlinks between the processor, chipset, and their numerous I/O. We are able to recall seeing these a minimum of way back to the LGA 775 Pentium 4 period, and doubtless earlier than that.
Effectively, the picture beneath is a photograph of such a slide being projected onto a wall at an occasion in Shenzen, China. It was shared to the broader web by one @9550Pro_, extra correctly often called HXL on Twitter. Presuming the picture is actual—it definitely appears to be like the half—it lays out the entire I/O accessible on the LGA 1700 platform with a Z790 chipset and Raptor Lake-S desktop CPU.
A number of issues leap out at us. Not the elevated core rely or cache capability; we have recognized about these options for some time. DDR5 reminiscence pace leaping from 4800 MT/s to 5600 MT/s is fairly fascinating, although. Likewise so is “enhanced core & reminiscence overclocking,” no matter that truly means. There is not any Thunderbolt or USB4 help constructed into the platform, however Intel will gladly promote you a discrete Maple Ridge controller you may add for that performance.
Maybe essentially the most fascinating omission on the diagram is PCI Specific 5.0 for the 4 “spare” lanes coming off the CPU. These lanes, that are usually routed to an M.2 SSD socket, are restricted to the 4.0 revision. Frankly, the lack of PCIe 5.0 for the boot drive may look unhealthy subsequent to AMD’s top-end platform, however it’s actually not possible to be of any sensible relevance for the complete helpful life of those methods.
The one different curious element that we might glean from the leaked slide was the help for two.5 GbE within the chipset. That’ll nonetheless require motherboard producers to wire up a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port, in fact, and that may very well be costlier than a easy GbE socket. Nonetheless, it might be good to lastly see customary LAN speeds creep above 1 Gigabit.
We do not know precisely when Raptor Lake will hit retailer cabinets, nevertheless it must be earlier than the tip of the 12 months.
