Rumor: Intel 9-Series Chipsets Won't Feature SATA-Express

By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Sadly, it seems that SATA-Express won't be featured on the upcoming Z97 chipset.

A report from the Chinese VR-Zone states that the SATA-Express standard, which was repeatedly expected to come to the upcoming Z97 chipset, won't be featured after all. Based on the information available, it would seem that this change would make the Z97 chipset nearly the same as the existing Z87 chipset.

It seems that Intel had not given a reason for the cancellation, though seemingly Intel is encouraging manufacturers to implement the technology by themselves.

SATA-Express is a technology that allows devices to use PCIe lanes for higher bandwidth, and it is a way that SATA can co-exist with PCI-Express, similar to, but not quite the way as the mSATA co-exists with mPCIe.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

24 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mouse24
    "Intel is encouraging manufacturers to implement the technology by themselves"

    So they would need to implement there own chips and such? I won't begin to speculate why they wouldn't add it on but I am assuming at first this is only going to be on the higher end boards, however I don'tt hink thats really a bad thing per say as most people who NEED the extra bandwidth of sata express is going to be using a higher end board anyhow. (Or atleast has the money to afford one.)
    Reply
  • itzsnypah
    Throughput. We aren't talking about wireless signals.
    Reply
  • thundervore
    Intel can send me a memo when the motherboards have PCIe4.0 USB4.0 and SATA4.0. Until them im sticking with my i7, Z77-UD5H,
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Not much point in adding higher-speed IO to Intel's IO hub until Intel upgrades the DMI bus between the CPU and IO hub. Otherwise, things will simply bottleneck there unless motherboard manufacturers start "borrowing" lanes from the CPU's PCIe 3.0 controller.
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    doesn't matter please make 6 core CPU @ 115x socket. With or without HT.
    Reply
  • southernshark
    I read this article just to see if anyone cared about this.
    Reply
  • phatboe
    I care, southernshark. One of the biggest bottlenecks in most modern day desktop computers is the hard drive. and with solid state drives getting faster exponentially as time goes by it is almost certain that the current SATA interface will be saturated very soon (See http://www.anandtech.com/show/7520/lsi-announces-sandforce-sf3700-sata-and-pcie-in-one-silicon). In fact SATA-e is one of the biggest reason for me to upgrade from my current build. Without SATA-e I will have a lot less reason to upgrade from my current build.
    Reply
  • Steve Proc
    another reason not to upgrade my z77 rig, these guys really don't want my money
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    Wake me up when I actually have a reason to upgrade my Q6600 DDR2 PC...
    So far All i see is most games run perfectly fine on it. After all, most of them are still PS3 and Xbox360 ports.

    Reply
  • southernshark
    11997957 said:
    I care, southernshark. One of the biggest bottlenecks in most modern day desktop computers is the hard drive. and with solid state drives getting faster exponentially as time goes by it is almost certain that the current SATA interface will be saturated very soon (See http://www.anandtech.com/show/7520/lsi-announces-sandforce-sf3700-sata-and-pcie-in-one-silicon). In fact SATA-e is one of the biggest reason for me to upgrade from my current build. Without SATA-e I will have a lot less reason to upgrade from my current build.

    Yeah yeah, but it doesn't need to be an on chip solution. And on most computers it won't matter. Where it will matter is on higher end machines where it doesn't need to be on the chip.

    Reply