Asus Readies Intel Z790 Motherboards with DDR4 Support

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Asus will support good-old DDR4 on select Intel Z790 motherboards.

Asus
(Image credit: Asus)

Asus is prepping at least five motherboards based on Intel's range-topping Z790 chipset that will support DDR4 memory. In addition, the motherboards will support Intel's flagship 13th Generation Core 'Raptor Lake' processors and users will be able to keep their existing high-performance memory modules. 

Asus plans to release two TUF Gaming (TUF Gaming Z790-Plus D4 and TUF Gaming Z790-Plus WiFi D4) as well as three Prime-series (Prime Z790-P D4, Prime Z790M-Plus D4, and Prime Z790-P WiFi D4) motherboards powered by Intel's Z790 chipset that will support DDR4 memory, based on an EAC filing discovered by @momomo_us. Of course, filings with EAC do not always guarantee that one product will be released, but three out of five motherboards are on the list of South Korea's RRA regulator (1, 2, 3), so Asus is indeed prepping DDR4-supporting Intel Z790 platforms. 

At reasonable prices, Asustek's TUF Gaming motherboards cater to demanding gamers who want performance, reliability, and overclockability. While TUF Gaming mainboards sit below the company's ROG platforms in the company's hierarchy, these are still relatively advanced motherboards with premium features. 

The Asus Prime family sits below TUF Gaming but still offers premium features, enhanced voltage regulating modules (VRMs) to enable overclocking, and various tuning capabilities. So it is a natural fit for the Prime Z790 family to include advanced LGA1700 motherboards that support DDR4 memory sticks. 

Like it or not, DDR4 memory's days are numbered, so Intel prefers to talk about DDR5 SDRAM even though its current 600-series and upcoming 700-series platforms support DDR4 and DDR5. But motherboard makers tend to offer what their customers want, and many want to continue using good-old DDR4 for a while, which is why both Asus and MSI will provide Z790-based platforms with DDR4. 

DDR4 memory has been around for seven years, and producers of high-end memory modules have sold a boatload of enthusiast-grade DDR4 modules with data transfer rates in DDR5's territory (yet with lower latencies and better performance). Throwing those modules away (or selling them at a bargain price) does not make sense, so keeping them for a couple of years is undoubtedly reasonable. 

The biggest question about midrange Z790 motherboards for Intel's Raptor Lake processors is whether they will adequately support the rumored 350W mode enabling ultimate turbo frequencies and therefore requiring an advanced voltage regulating module to deliver immaculate power to the CPU. TUF Gaming and Prime are still premium motherboards, but they are not as good as the Asus ROG family. It will be exciting to see how different Intel Z790 platforms perform.

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • The Historical Fidelity
    Wow, 350 watt max frequency mode…Just wow. I think I am done with Intel until they get their priorities straightened out.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    That's good news! That way, people who want a Raptor Lake chip but don't want to overspend on RAM still got options with the new boards as well and don't have to rely on the Alder Lake boards, while those still support the new chips for upgraders and people who want to save money. Options. That's always good.

    The Historical Fidelity said:
    Wow, 350 watt max frequency mode…Just wow. I think I am done with Intel until they get their priorities straightened out.
    You did see the word "rumored" in there, right? It's not confirmed yet. Raptor Lake will have a max PL2 on the biggest chips of 250W, that is confirmed. At worst, that rumored new boost mode will be active for a few seconds and not more, or not even show up. I at least never observed Thermal Velocity Boost on my 12700k, it's always operated within regular turbo specs. The next question is, how often do you expect to see that power draw to begin with? I only ever get past 100W when benchmarking, gaming is always well below that. I feel like people sometimes get spooked far too easily tbh.
    Reply
  • The Historical Fidelity
    KyaraM said:
    That's good news! That way, people who want a Raptor Lake chip but don't want to overspend on RAM still got options with the new boards as well and don't have to rely on the Alder Lake boards, while those still support the new chips for upgraders and people who want to save money. Options. That's always good.


    You did see the word "rumored" in there, right? It's not confirmed yet. Raptor Lake will have a max PL2 on the biggest chips of 250W, that is confirmed. At worst, that rumored new boost mode will be active for a few seconds and not more, or not even show up. I at least never observed Thermal Velocity Boost on my 12700k, it's always operated within regular turbo specs. The next question is, how often do you expect to see that power draw to begin with? I only ever get past 100W when benchmarking, gaming is always well below that. I feel like people sometimes get spooked far too easily tbh.
    That’s because the 12700k doesn’t support thermal velocity boost, it only has turbo boost 3.0.

    and 250 watts is way too much for 8 cores and 16 peasant threads. AMD’s 230 watts for 16 full bore cores is much more reasonable.
    Reply
  • shady28
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    Wow, 350 watt max frequency mode…Just wow. I think I am done with Intel until they get their priorities straightened out.

    You have to turn that on in BIOS, and it is still limited by if you can cool your CPU. IIRC you have to keep the CPU to 70C or less for TVB 3.0 to help you much, which means it's irrelevant to you unless you at a minimum have a comprehensive open loop cooling solution. It's not like someone is twisting your arm to do any of that.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    That’s because the 12700k doesn’t support thermal velocity boost, it only has turbo boost 3.0.

    and 250 watts is way too much for 8 cores and 16 peasant threads. AMD’s 230 watts for 16 full bore cores is much more reasonable.
    Then I mixed up TVB with Turbo Boost 3.0, which, however, also rarely happens if at all. That's my bad, then.

    The 13900k is a 8p/16e core CPU with 32 threads thanks to HT on the 8 p-cores; each of those 16 cores needs energy to run, so it alludes me how that is too much. And those "peasant cores", as you call them, pull quite a bif of weight, too. Each core uses energy, it doesn't matter if they are all equally strong or not. And that performance difference does not correlate with power consumption 1:1, never was, never will, no matter if AMD or Intel. For multi-threaded performance especially, the e-cores are a great help no matter if you like it or not, it's a fact. Even if you don't need them because you are gaming, they don't use that much power in, let's say, gaming. My CPU uses somewhere between 25-40W in games, maybe 60 in more demanding ones, despite having 12 cores. That's the level of my old, 4-core 7600k. I really don't get your problem. Those 250W are during the most demanding loads only. Nog in day to day use.
    Reply
  • The Historical Fidelity
    KyaraM said:
    Then I mixed up TVB with Turbo Boost 3.0, which, however, also rarely happens if at all. That's my bad, then.

    The 13900k is a 8p/16e core CPU with 32 threads thanks to HT on the 8 p-cores; each of those 16 cores needs energy to run, so it alludes me how that is too much. And those "peasant cores", as you call them, pull quite a bif of weight, too. Each core uses energy, it doesn't matter if they are all equally strong or not. And that performance difference does not correlate with power consumption 1:1, never was, never will, no matter if AMD or Intel. For multi-threaded performance especially, the e-cores are a great help no matter if you like it or not, it's a fact. Even if you don't need them because you are gaming, they don't use that much power in, let's say, gaming. My CPU uses somewhere between 25-40W in games, maybe 60 in more demanding ones, despite having 12 cores. That's the level of my old, 4-core 7600k. I really don't get your problem. Those 250W are during the most demanding loads only. Nog in day to day use.
    Because it’s the principle of the thing. AMD is doing it right and the only way Intel can compete is by gluing mobile phone cores onto its 8 core designs. The problem with 350 watts is that probably 200 watts of that will be used by the 8 p-cores which means Intel has a long way to go before they can reach the energy efficiency of Zen.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    and 250 watts is way too much for 8 cores and 16 peasant threads. AMD’s 230 watts for 16 full bore cores is much more reasonable.
    Depends on what you do with your system, AMDs approach with all "real" cores is good for DC type workloads because it doesn't matter if your cores lose 25-30% of clocks when they all work because that type of workload scales more with amount of cores than it does with clocks of cores.

    For all the other people that use a desktop PC as a desktop PC linux released an update for high core count CPUs to keep work on as few cores as possible because otherwise the clocks drop way too much causing noticeable issues, enough for them to cause a linux update.
    With intel you don't get that issue because the main cores can always boost to the max, you get maybe a 100-200Mhz boost on your preferred cores if you don't have an all core boost going.
    https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/new-linux-os-scheduler-reduces-lag-by-keeping-light-work-on-fewer-cpu-cores.3778008/
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    Because it’s the principle of the thing. AMD is doing it right and the only way Intel can compete is by gluing mobile phone cores onto its 8 core designs. The problem with 350 watts is that probably 200 watts of that will be used by the 8 p-cores which means Intel has a long way to go before they can reach the energy efficiency of Zen.
    Ugh. It has been discussed again and again why this is nonsense and I really don't want to jump down this dumb rabbit hole again... if you don't want it, don't buy it, but also please stop pointless, needless bashing.
    Reply