There are whispers that the next generation of processors and motherboards from Intel will have their launch date accelerated. Japan's Hermitage Akihabara says that, "according to several officials," the Intel Haswell E and Intel X99 Express chipset will be launched on Friday 29th August.
Hermitage Akihabara adds in its report that motherboard and RAM manufacturers are all preparing their next generation compatible wares at a rapid pace. We should expect the lineup of upcoming X99 boards to be as numerous as the Intel Z97 predecessors it suggests.
Two Intel X99 chipset motherboards from EVGA's upcoming range have been revealed in pictures over at Guru 3D and LinusTechTips. Both a mATX and an ATX 'Classified' motherboard are shown and said to be priced at US$250 and $400 respectively.
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Looking at the mATX board first it appears to offer three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, four DIMM slots, an M.2 storage connector and six SATA3 6Gbps ports. At the top right of the picture you can see the power and reset buttons and slightly lower down is a diagnostic LED.
The EVGA X99 Classified features five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots and one x4 slot. Eight DIMM slots are present and for storage you can utilise two M.2 slots and 10 SATA3 6Gbps ports. You can see the same power, reset and LED at the upper right of this board design. You also cannot miss the large 'E'VGA logo covered heatsink block.
If the Hermitage Akihabara information is accurate we should be swamped by launches of X99 motherboards by the end of next week.
