March 28, 2024

Intel is not only updating things on the High End Desktop side in 2016 but also bringing forth their latest Kaby Lake desktop processor platform for the mainstream market. Intel’s 7th generation core processors, codenamed Kaby Lake, will be based on the existing 14nm process node with further refinements to the design. Replacing the Skylake generation of processors, Kaby Lake isn’t expected to bring incremental increase to processor performance but will remain compatible with existing platforms while featuring support for next generation 200-series platform.

Much like AMD’s upcoming Zen , which I covered in this article , Intel also seems to be targeting Q4 2016 / Q1 2017 release . Kaby Lake processors probably are not reason enough to warrant a upgrade for current Skylake owners. However alongside the processor series will be intel’s new 200 series chipsets. Much like the current popular Z170 series there is going to be a H270 and Z270 as well.

According to Benchlife.info Intel will be offering support for the Kaby Lake and Skylake processors on both 100-series and 200-series motherboards. This means that consumers can use their Skylake chips on a 200-series board or a Kaby Lake chip on a 100-series board.

Intel 200-Series chipsets for Kaby Lake-S Platform Detailed. (Image Credits: Benchlife)
Intel 200-Series chipsets for Kaby Lake-S Platform Detailed. (Image Credits: Benchlife)

The two new chips are marketed towards specific markets. The Z270 series is aimed at the consumer market while the H270 series is aimed at the consumer and corporate market.

The 200 chipset will have more PCI-Express gen 3.0 lanes. The chipset will have 14 downstream PCIe lanes; compared to 10 on the 100-series chipsets for things like Thunderbolt, USB 3.1 controllers and more M.2 slots. In total, there are 30 PCIe lane , opposed to 26 on the 100-series chipset motherboards.

TechARX Says : Just as I said in my previous article about AMD’s Zen , its not official yet. Better take these info with a grain of salt. We have to wait for its release to know how much of this is  true