Intel has officially introduced its new motherboard codenamed DX79SR. According to the company's developers, this board is the most functional one among all models ever released by Intel. One won't find it difficult to guess that the release of DX79SR is devoted to the announcement of a flagship processor Intel Core i7-3970X EE which breaks all records in terms of power-efficiency: its TDP level is estimated at 150W.



Motherboard Intel DX79SR is developed in ATX form-factor. It is compatible with LGA2011 socket and operates under Intel X79 Express chipset. The manufacturer alloted eight 240-contact slots for SDRAM memory of DDR3-2400+ type; the overall capacity of system memory might achieve 64 GB. Intel HD Audio is represented by 10-channel subsystem (7.1+2 channels with independent current transfer) with five analog outputs and optical S/PDIF output.


Motherboard extension facilities include three slots for PCI-e 3.0 x16 expansion cards, a couple of PCI-e x1 slots, and a …

ASRock is going to officially introduce its two budgetary motherboards (compatible with Intel Haswell processors) in early June. Codenamed ASRock Z87 Extreme 4 and ASRock Z87 Pro 3, these products will cost around $170 and $100 correspondingly. Such attractive price makes them one of the most affordable solutions involving high-efficient CPUs of the next generation.



The more costly motherboard, Z87 Extreme 4, is known to feature only high-quality layout components, including PCB with dual copper layers, chokes with ferrite hub, and durable solid-state capacitors. This model supports DDR3 memory modules of up to 2600 MHz frequency and up to 32 GB capacity. Expansion slots consist of two PCI connectors, two PCI Express 3.0 x1 connectors, and three PCI Express 3.0 x16 connectors.


The connection of internal drives becomes possible due to the availability of eight SATA III sockets. Audio subsystem is realized with the help of 8.1-channel Creative Sound Blaster codec. External …

Heightened demand for high-end processor solutions and ever rising competition make AMD constantly develop its products. This usually results in the release of really outstanding items, such as already acknowledged Bulldozer and Piledriver. Therefore, according to the words of the companies technical manager, Mark Papermaster, the development of a new processor architecture, codenamed Steamroller, is already on order of AMD's business. The ready-made products are sure to be released next year. Steamroller is called to become the third edition of Bulldozer architecture that launched last year and a loyal companion of Piledriver core.



The initial data witness that processors on Steamroller architecture will be designed in correspondence with 28 nm technological process. This should favorably affect their efficiency and enlarge the performance by 15-20% at equivalent power consumption and clock frequency. At the same time, Steamroller will improve all specifications implemented in …