Is Gigabyte’s Aorus X299 Gaming World’s First Kaby Lake-X-Specific Motherboard?

[Guest]

The board's product page stated that it’s specifically designed to support only the quad-core Intel i7-7740X and i7-7640X processors.

Is Gigabyte’s Aorus X299 Gaming World’s First Kaby Lake-X-Specific Motherboard? : Read more

 

[mapesdhs]

"Thus, it’s easy to see why there just hasn’t been a compelling reason to purchase a Kaby Lake-X CPU. At least until now. "

Really, no. I see nothing here that appeals over Ryzen, especially when both NV/AMD are moving away from SLI/CF tech, and devs aren't bothering to optimise for such configs. A board specific to a chip that's for a socket which is supposed to also support CPUs with a lot more cores?? It's like the opposite end of the logic scale of daftness. Intel seem to have given up trying to sit in the middle and thus not fall off, and why Gigabyte is making this thing is beyond me.

 

[Guest]

There is nothing appealing on Ryzen system which compared to everything i run so far on Intel just sucks. As far as SLI goes, works perfectly well under Windows 7....it does not under DX12 Win10 but again both DX12 and Win10 sucks.

 

[jasonelmore]

The big thing about Kabylake X is it can Overclock to 5ghz on air cooling with very little, if any, voltage boost. I'm glad they are doing these kabylake x only boards. Intel must have slacked up on the platform requirements, because previously a kabylake x only board was against Intel's Terms of Service

 

[tamalero]

I call BS on the 5Ghz on air.
A lot of previews did show that the consumption of the 10+core units of Intel do overheat, throttle and get insanely hot on their VRMs and the auxiliary CPU power cables.

 

[warmon6]

I call BS on the 5Ghz on air.
A lot of previews did show that the consumption of the 10+core units of Intel do overheat, throttle and get insanely hot on their VRMs and the auxiliary CPU power cables.

Tamalero, unless your not responding to jasonelmore, he's talking about kabylake-x (those odd 4 core cpu's). Not the skylake-x cpu's that range from 6 to 10 core's currently.

And those cpu's can do 5ghz on air. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/75590-intel-kaby-lake-x-i7-7740x-review-18.html

 

[derekullo]

We want 10 gigabit Ethernet.

 

[Hood-PC]

I knew they'd get around to this - KBLX will be the new OC king, having KBLX -specific boards is going to push these CPUs into the limelight. Cheapest X299 system will also be the fastest for gaming. I want...

 

[Kennyy Evony]

Time to best all ryzen users in pvp online and let them stream it. It's all its good for.

 

[lewist]

Intel has probably paid boardmakers to make these to get rid of i7-7740X and i7-7640X processor inventory clogging up their warehouses

 

[Aredeep5395]

Sooo.. does this make my z270p mobo outdated for my i7 7700k kaby lake processor ?

 

[Rogue Leader]

Sooo.. does this make my z270p mobo outdated for my i7 7700k kaby lake processor ?

No, the 7700k is incompatible with X299. Not only that You're better off with Z270 and a 7700k IMO. X299 is a waste of money for Kabylake X processors.

 

[Hood-PC]

Sooo.. does this make my z270p mobo outdated for my i7 7700k kaby lake processor ?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html You're still #2 in single thread, only the 7740x (slightly) above. Note that i7-4790K is #3, which made me happy about my 3-year-old Haswell system.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

Guessing this kabylake x mobo would be priced in the below $200 category? Otherwise, the 7700k/z270 is the way to go.

 

[Hood-PC]

I'm guessing it's $150

 

[the nerd 389]

KBLX is still a questionable value at best, especially for people who do more than play games. Historically, that's the audience that the HEDT platforms catered to.

Gamers are still better of with a Z270 or Z370 system and putting the difference into a better GPU. 5 GHz doesn't help nearly as much as moving a notch or two up the GPU food chain.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

^ will agree on that with the 8700k. But it would have been a great move if they used z270 since it the same socket. My guess is that the z370 will start at 150 mark.

 

[Hood-PC]

KBLX is still a questionable value at best, especially for people who do more than play games. Historically, that's the audience that the HEDT platforms catered to.

Gamers are still better of with a Z270 or Z370 system and putting the difference into a better GPU. 5 GHz doesn't help nearly as much as moving a notch or two up the GPU food chain.

What difference - either platform should cost exactly the same, which is the whole point of these KBLX-specific boards. These are not aimed at traditional HEDT buyers, obviously. Try to keep up, it's 2017, Intel has done a little more segmentation in their product lines (and blurred the lines a bit), but it's not really that confusing, not as some people make it out to be. I hope for more common sense and less drama...

 

[Hood-PC]

Sooo.. does this make my z270p mobo outdated for my i7 7700k kaby lake processor ?

No, the 7700k is incompatible with X299. Not only that You're better off with Z270 and a 7700k IMO. X299 is a waste of money for Kabylake X processors.

Yes, a regular X299 board is expensive overkill for these quad cores at $250-500 - that's the whole point of this KBLX-specific board, you get a better CPU for the same money (or $10 more?)and nothing's wasted on extra memory slots/channels and PCIe slots/lanes, so the board should be as cheap as low-to-medium priced Z270 board. Why are people so confused by Intel's product segmentation these days? I understood the reason for every move they made, and predicted this board class from the first X299 article I read, and also predicted that 7740X would be Intel's top OC chip as soon as I heard it was a quad core on X299 (what other reason for putting it on X299?). Intel is as smart as ever, it's just fashionable now to troll every Intel post with misinformation and fake stats.

 

[gio2vanni86]

At the end of the day. Intel still loses. Its only great at gaming. But lets not forget that they still limit there lanes by a lot. That means a lot to some of us users who have more then hand full of things connected. And to the skeptics that sli is dead. It may be dead slightly. I still love my 980s they did exactly what sli was intended to do. Can't say the same or even close with my two 1080ti's but you never know. Its too early to say since i had that problem early on with my 980's and then later down the road it all made sense.

 

[mapesdhs]

... Its too early to say since i had that problem early on with my 980's and then later down the road it all made sense.

It's the newer games and drivers where SLI/CF usefulness is fading; dev support/effort is dwindling, and both NV/AMD aren't pushing it anymore. Mbd vendors are, but what for? This is being reinforced by the adoption of high frequency monitors, higher resolutions, etc., for which stuttering is a bigger annoyance.

SLI/CF are great for older games on older hw, but without any relevant hw makers or devs pushing it, the idea will fade ever more. Nutty part is, with them all trying to push VR, I don't know why they aren't going for using one GPU for each viewpoint, something which would allow for multiple users in the same scene and it would mean having more than two GPUs would have some purpose. Not exactly a new idea, SGI was doing this twenty years ago.

Ian.

 

[zippyzion]

I just don't know about this Kaby Lake X. You lose the IGP, you get a smidge more base performance and a smidge more overclocking headroom, but none of the other advantages of x299.

With Coffee Lake on the horizon, and it requiring a new motherboard, will there be an x299 Coffee Lake X? If they can't make it work, which why would they be able to if they can't make the current socket compatible with Coffee Lake, then you will be buying a single generation motherboard for a fringe product. There isn't even the upgrade path to the i9 offerings.

As we've seen with Ryzen, Coffee Lake rumors, and i9, more cores seems to be the future, but this board locks you in to a platform that supports a max of 4c/8t, and with the prices being what they are in that segment it just isn't a good investment. It would make a lot more sense to release a lower cost x299 board with the majority of the features intact, including i9 support, and have an actual upgrade path to higher core counts.

If you plan on keeping your PC for 3+ years this makes SOME sense, but if you are an annual upgrade kinda person, stay away. We've hit a point where a quad core is minimum for any kind of performance tasks and hyperthreading only goes so far. It might last you for a while, but I don't see any kind of long term support in this niche, at least not the kind of support you will find on a mainstream platform or the larger i9 segment.