Expected to launch and some point in September the X99 Haswell-E chipset is the first consumer motherboard series to support DDR4 memory. Here at Evatech we are getting a lot of questions from customers asking if they should bother waiting for this or not so we thought we would take the time to address it publicly online.
From what we know so far, there will be 3 new CPU sku’s, the 5820K, 5930K and 5960X. At this point the price points are still just rumors but according to Niels Broekhuijsen over at Tomshardware we expect them to start at around the $450 AUD mark and go all the way up to $1100 for the top of the line model.
Differentiating the K and X series of the new CPUs is the following.
K Series
6 Cores
12 Threads
15MB L3 Cache
X Series
8 Cores
16 Threads
20MB L3 Cache
All pulling a 140w TDP their factory clock speeds are all a modest 3.0 to 3.5GHz but are expected to be extremely overclock-able when paired with the right cooling solution.
With all the recent news coverage of the new CPUs motherboard vendors have been quick to jump on board the hype train with Gigabyte, Asus, MSI all releasing details about some of their upcoming products. These announcements are little less exciting, not much has come out about pricing but in terms of feature sets there is nothing amazing, these will be high end well made feature packed boards for enthusiasts and they will be expensive.
M.2 support, plenty of SATA & USB3 ports, a massive amount of PCI-E lanes with SLI and Crossfire capabilities and space for up to 8 dimms of memory seems to be the standard so far.
All the big players have announced their DDR4 sku’s including Corsair, Crucial, AData & GSkill with 2133MHz looking like the default for the entry level DIMMs with 2800MHz and 3000MHz sku’s filling in the top end. With prices expected to drop slowly overtime it looks like DDR4 will be released at roughly 1.5x the price of its DDR3 equivalents.
So whats this mean for PC Gaming?
Without benchmarks or being able to get our hands on all these new goodies just yet we will reserve final judgement when it comes to performance and the all important question, is it work paying more to get DDR4 or should I stick with DDR3?
DDR4 will be at first only supported on the enthusiast X99 chipsets which means to get it you already will have to shell out a pretty penny on the motherboard and CPU before even considering the premium on the memory.
To the hardware enthusiasts who get their kicks having the latest and greatest, regardless of the cost, you’ll be able to get your hands on these new X99 motherboards, DDR4 and Haswell-E CPUs in only a few weeks time. Keep an eye on our custom gaming PCs page for updates!
For those who just want their games to run smoothly and don’t want to worry about how it’s happening, just disregard this article completely. Good old DDR3 and the standard Haswell CPUs will be great gaming hardware options for a LONG time to come.