Very useful, wish the video was out few months ago. Would have saved me many hours. Showing what device is connected to CPU and what to chipset, I couldn't always even find on my own
Thank you. Yes, where lane availability is, and what the bandwidth implications are for where devices are connected isn’t obvious and you need to dig into each board to work it out. But looking at it from this perspective is a help. Appreciate the comment!
Well explained, one thing that did get me on the B760 which might be worth mentioning, is setting up Raid on NVME drives is not supported, so moving my raid array from my old Z590 board was a no go, which pee'd me off a bit as it wasn't even really mention in the spec, and you had to dig in the manual and even then it was ambiguous. I've got a Asus B760-Plus WiFi cheap used with a 13600k, I wasn't bothered to much about overclocking as with all my previous boards since the Z68 and 2600k I've never ended up bothering. My sons 13600k is very slightly faster in Z690 board but nothing worth worrying about, I was more wondering what i was missing in terms pcie lanes but again for what I'm using it for not much. In my opinion over clocking is pretty much dead, not like the days of my 2600k where you can actually make a massive difference, cpus are pretty much pushed to the limits out tye box these days.
Hi, thanks for the comment. I am not sure this is strictly a limitation of the chipset, as RAID is usually delivered by another part of the chipset, such as an Intel RAID controller. But its possible the lane limitation for the DMI channels means that mobos don't implement support for it due to bandwidth constraints, or that on the lower end boards they are being cheap on the RAID controller. The ROG Strix B760-I manuals seem to say that NVME RAID is supported on the controller, but the specs are less clear and I don't find any definitive statements on support for this other than from specific board manufacturers. But again, its often ambiguous and mentions that RAID is supported on SATA, rather that pointing out that it isn't supported on NVME. So thanks for pointing this out, it seems pretty opaque as you say and could certainly catch people out.
just caught up to this one! thanks again for the deep dive. The DMI was the reason why I preferred Z790 board instead of B760. 1. Just one question here. what about PCI lanes for IO connectivity. In the amd architecture, you had showed few lanes being used for IO but none here. 2. Surprising that none of the boards provide PCI5 storage for M2 slot without affecting the bandwidth of GPU slot. AMD seems to be better here. Is my understanding correct?
On the AMD architecture, it seems clearer that the IO connectivity has assigned lanes, usually PCIe3 lanes on the chipset. On the Intel 700 diagrams, this seems far less transparent. But inevitable, those connections (SATA, USB, Networking) will consume PCIe lanes and need to be carried over the DMI channel. But it seems those may be in addition to the published lane availability and not documented publicly as they are just considered system connectivity. As the AMD chipset is a third party chip, it may just be more clearly documented what its IO capabilities are. As for PCIe lane contention, yes on the Intel boards you cannot assign PCIe 5 lanes to storage without bifurcating the GPU lane, which is really of questionable benefit. Given GPUs have been PCIe4, this would actually leave you with only 8 PCIe 4 lanes to the GPU, which in practice may not be a limiting factor, but with current and new GPUs (and Gen 5 NVMe), they may be able to exceed 8 PCIe4 lanes of bandwidth and it could be a problem. For the AMD 'E' boards (B650E, X670E), they provide 20 lanes of PCIe from the socket, so you can have 16 lanes for the GPU and 4 for the NVMe in socket connected M.2 slot. Right now, there are no PCIe5 GPUs, but there are now rumors of the nVidia RTX5000 having this. We will see how that plays out.
The B760 and Z790 only provide 16 Gen 5 lanes. Nearly all the boards only provide those to the PCIe slot, typically for the GPU, so you can't use a Gen5 NVMe. The Godlike does allow you to connect 4 Gen 5 lanes to one of the NVMe slots, but doing so bifurcates the lanes to the GPU slot, giving only 8 lanes for the PCIe slot. Seeing as there are no Gen5 GPUs, that would have the affect of now only giving you an 8 Slot Gen4 connection to the GPU, which its hard to see being useful for the kind of buyer who picks up a Godlike board. One of the big use cases for fast NVMe storage is with direct storage for fast texture loads to the GPU. But if you kill your GPU bandwidth, that isn't useful. So in effect, these boards do not really offer either a way to use a Gen5 NVMe, or in the case of the Godlike any 'practical' way to use one. And if its hard to capture the essence of this in a comment, I do explain that as I talk over the boards in the video also. hope this helps!
Nice guide, love diagrams of lanes you did on boards. If you are planning to review other boards in future additionally I would like to see VRM specs of boards (other reviewers such as HWunboxed fail to provide VRM specs consitently so this could be a good attraction to your video guides).
Thank you. Nice point on the VRM choices. Other than the lane and slot setups, power delivery is another thing that can vary as you go up the board lines.
I didn't do any CPU benchmarking here, this was purely about comparing the boards capabilities and if the X790 options really provide extra value. I think the short answer to your question is, that you cannot overclock on the B760 as its a locked feature. So systems without an overclocked CPU is almost always going to perform just as well on both motherboards. The PCIe lane differences will only matter to a very limited number of users with specific storage needs. But if you want to overclock, then it has to be a X790, and the relative performance will be down to how much you turn the screw on the CPU clocks, and what your CPU will do and remain stable. Also, the differences between the lower range X790 boards like the Tomahawk and the top of the line boards which can be 5 times the price, are marginal from a system performance perspective. There will be some power stage improvements on the top end boards, but likely minimal percentage points in terms of real terms benchmark results. So the range of boards and their prices are more linked to buyers tolerance to pay than really measurable performance benefits.
I saw it in multiple reviews that heavily threaded benchmarks (for example R23) tend to get lower scores for b760 boards (for example msi tomahawk). Why is that the case?
Without seeing the details, it's hard to speculate. Were all the components like for like (same CPU, DRAM etc), and was any overclocking in place on the Z790 test? I am sure you can get higher max values from a Z790, either due to clocks and getting higher end components on higher end boards. But for most people, is that perceivable in day to day workloads, and does it justify the uplift in price, which can be huge.
@@sometechguy See eteknix MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 Motherboard Review or tomshardware MSI MAG B760M Mortar Review. For the latter the explanation is thermal throttling. Does B760 give too much voltage for the cpu? I am planning to buy a 14600k, but can't decide if b760 is enough or not.
Thank you for the video but t would be good to add few words about MSI pro series. In my country(Bulgaria) MSI b760 tomahawk and MSI Pro Z790-A are at the same 250 euro price and edge Z790 is 350+ euro. All dd5. I don't see any benefit of b760 and edge z790 over Pro Z790-A except from an aesthetic point of view...
Hi, thanks for the comment. Maybe a follow up might be good on the gaming focused boards vs the Pro, because you are right that often the main difference is just aesthetics and you can get a better deal if you are not worried about this.
MSI MAG B760M MORTAR MAX WIFI DDR5 ----- MSI PRO Z790-A WIFI, 4xDDR5 help me choose a motherboard. I'm leaning towards these two. I want it for the processor i7 13700kf. I will not do overclocking. If the first option can be chosen and the VRM is suitable, I would like to buy this board.
The 13700kf chip allows overclocking, and you will pay a premium for that. So if you don't plan to overclock, and honestly doing this isn't going to be a game changer but just an incremental improvement, then you can save by not buying the K chip. If you do buy the K chip, then buying the B760 board won't allow you to overclock it anyway. So either go with the K chip and the Z790 board if you want the option to overclock and pay the premium. Or stick with the non-K and go with the B760 for better value for your money. But this comment doesn't consider other things such as price (including discounts), availability and other feature capabilities. So your mileage may vary. The F-variant CPU also doesn't have integrated graphics, so you need a discrete GPU, but I am sure you know that already. I would do a little research on K vs non-K and make sure you are getting what you need. The CPU price difference is probably pretty small ($10-$20) compared to the main board price change, which is more like $100.
Thank you for such an extended answer. The prices for these boards are the same. But board 3 has a VRM of 16+1+1 and board B has 12+1+1. Will there be a big difference for this processor? Sorry, I'm writing via Google Translate
In the near future, I am not interested in overclocking the processor. And what’s more, I don’t know how to do this. But I already bought the processor itself and I’m not going to give it back. I was looking for a white board, but I couldn’t find one that fit my budget with good chips, except for this gray one. I didn’t want to take Chinese Colorful, because it’s not familiar to me at all, especially since there’s little information on UA-cam@@sometechguy
If you have an K CPU in hand already, and the boards are the same price then get the Z board as it gives you the options. I have not gone into the details on the VRM power stages on those boards, but usually I would expect for MSI that both the power stage options are going to be fine unless you are pushing very hard on overclocking and the stability becomes a real problem. Honestly, I suspect that the power stage difference is primarily marketing and justification for high price when selling to people who want the absolute best. The high end boards often come with features that are really not needed unless maybe you are doing very aggressive over clocks and high end cooling, which for most that buy, will never be done.
As a fully designer and gamer, I was scared a little bit to buy a b760 plus ddr 5 from Asus, cus I fear not to use the full potential of my i7 12 gen on it. Thank you mate it's now clearer to me it's Ok to go with it, cus I'm not the guy who overclock things. My spec: i7 12th gen K type. RTX 4070 SUPER Crucial ddr5 ram Asus b760 plus mobo atx 360mm aio cooler
It’s easy to get FOMO and just buy a top end board, but as you say, unless you really need the features, it often isn’t giving you anything. 😃 Enjoy the build!
PC components have got silly. GPUs are also an example, but the Godlike board and even the Asus ROG Maximus seem to have lost the plot. And not to say the lower end boards are cheap, because they are not, but they often do everything that is needed and will give the same gaming experience for way less.
Its not boring its real knowledge which will help lots of users steer clear of marketing gimmicks and put their money on better hardware which directly affects performance
Very informative, descriptive - lanes allocation of course - and knowledgeable. Thank you.
Thank you 🙏 appreciate the comment.
Man you are a life saver, keep doing this
Very useful, wish the video was out few months ago. Would have saved me many hours.
Showing what device is connected to CPU and what to chipset, I couldn't always even find on my own
Thank you. Yes, where lane availability is, and what the bandwidth implications are for where devices are connected isn’t obvious and you need to dig into each board to work it out. But looking at it from this perspective is a help. Appreciate the comment!
One of the best videos that explains the current Intel platform differences!
Thank you, I tried to do something different and less obvious than a lot of the content on these motherboards. Appreciate the comment.
Well explained, one thing that did get me on the B760 which might be worth mentioning, is setting up Raid on NVME drives is not supported, so moving my raid array from my old Z590 board was a no go, which pee'd me off a bit as it wasn't even really mention in the spec, and you had to dig in the manual and even then it was ambiguous. I've got a Asus B760-Plus WiFi cheap used with a 13600k, I wasn't bothered to much about overclocking as with all my previous boards since the Z68 and 2600k I've never ended up bothering. My sons 13600k is very slightly faster in Z690 board but nothing worth worrying about, I was more wondering what i was missing in terms pcie lanes but again for what I'm using it for not much. In my opinion over clocking is pretty much dead, not like the days of my 2600k where you can actually make a massive difference, cpus are pretty much pushed to the limits out tye box these days.
Hi, thanks for the comment.
I am not sure this is strictly a limitation of the chipset, as RAID is usually delivered by another part of the chipset, such as an Intel RAID controller. But its possible the lane limitation for the DMI channels means that mobos don't implement support for it due to bandwidth constraints, or that on the lower end boards they are being cheap on the RAID controller. The ROG Strix B760-I manuals seem to say that NVME RAID is supported on the controller, but the specs are less clear and I don't find any definitive statements on support for this other than from specific board manufacturers. But again, its often ambiguous and mentions that RAID is supported on SATA, rather that pointing out that it isn't supported on NVME.
So thanks for pointing this out, it seems pretty opaque as you say and could certainly catch people out.
The video we need…ty bro…b760 really makes sense for day to day gamer, save mowny on board and probably get better cpu and gpu then
Yes, exactly. Thank you for taking the time to comment!
@@sometechguysubscribed to you❤
just caught up to this one! thanks again for the deep dive. The DMI was the reason why I preferred Z790 board instead of B760.
1. Just one question here. what about PCI lanes for IO connectivity. In the amd architecture, you had showed few lanes being used for IO but none here.
2. Surprising that none of the boards provide PCI5 storage for M2 slot without affecting the bandwidth of GPU slot. AMD seems to be better here. Is my understanding correct?
On the AMD architecture, it seems clearer that the IO connectivity has assigned lanes, usually PCIe3 lanes on the chipset. On the Intel 700 diagrams, this seems far less transparent. But inevitable, those connections (SATA, USB, Networking) will consume PCIe lanes and need to be carried over the DMI channel. But it seems those may be in addition to the published lane availability and not documented publicly as they are just considered system connectivity. As the AMD chipset is a third party chip, it may just be more clearly documented what its IO capabilities are.
As for PCIe lane contention, yes on the Intel boards you cannot assign PCIe 5 lanes to storage without bifurcating the GPU lane, which is really of questionable benefit. Given GPUs have been PCIe4, this would actually leave you with only 8 PCIe 4 lanes to the GPU, which in practice may not be a limiting factor, but with current and new GPUs (and Gen 5 NVMe), they may be able to exceed 8 PCIe4 lanes of bandwidth and it could be a problem.
For the AMD 'E' boards (B650E, X670E), they provide 20 lanes of PCIe from the socket, so you can have 16 lanes for the GPU and 4 for the NVMe in socket connected M.2 slot. Right now, there are no PCIe5 GPUs, but there are now rumors of the nVidia RTX5000 having this. We will see how that plays out.
Did I hear right near the end: "None of these boards can run the Gen5 NVMe SSD's"?
The B760 and Z790 only provide 16 Gen 5 lanes. Nearly all the boards only provide those to the PCIe slot, typically for the GPU, so you can't use a Gen5 NVMe. The Godlike does allow you to connect 4 Gen 5 lanes to one of the NVMe slots, but doing so bifurcates the lanes to the GPU slot, giving only 8 lanes for the PCIe slot. Seeing as there are no Gen5 GPUs, that would have the affect of now only giving you an 8 Slot Gen4 connection to the GPU, which its hard to see being useful for the kind of buyer who picks up a Godlike board. One of the big use cases for fast NVMe storage is with direct storage for fast texture loads to the GPU. But if you kill your GPU bandwidth, that isn't useful.
So in effect, these boards do not really offer either a way to use a Gen5 NVMe, or in the case of the Godlike any 'practical' way to use one. And if its hard to capture the essence of this in a comment, I do explain that as I talk over the boards in the video also.
hope this helps!
Awesome break down!!!
Nice guide, love diagrams of lanes you did on boards. If you are planning to review other boards in future additionally I would like to see VRM specs of boards (other reviewers such as HWunboxed fail to provide VRM specs consitently so this could be a good attraction to your video guides).
Thank you. Nice point on the VRM choices. Other than the lane and slot setups, power delivery is another thing that can vary as you go up the board lines.
I want performance graphs! How much slower the 13900K will be on the B760
I didn't do any CPU benchmarking here, this was purely about comparing the boards capabilities and if the X790 options really provide extra value. I think the short answer to your question is, that you cannot overclock on the B760 as its a locked feature. So systems without an overclocked CPU is almost always going to perform just as well on both motherboards. The PCIe lane differences will only matter to a very limited number of users with specific storage needs.
But if you want to overclock, then it has to be a X790, and the relative performance will be down to how much you turn the screw on the CPU clocks, and what your CPU will do and remain stable.
Also, the differences between the lower range X790 boards like the Tomahawk and the top of the line boards which can be 5 times the price, are marginal from a system performance perspective. There will be some power stage improvements on the top end boards, but likely minimal percentage points in terms of real terms benchmark results.
So the range of boards and their prices are more linked to buyers tolerance to pay than really measurable performance benefits.
@@sometechguy so you cant make any conclusions
@@wololo10 he can, he just prefers not to
I saw it in multiple reviews that heavily threaded benchmarks (for example R23) tend to get lower scores for b760 boards (for example msi tomahawk). Why is that the case?
Without seeing the details, it's hard to speculate. Were all the components like for like (same CPU, DRAM etc), and was any overclocking in place on the Z790 test? I am sure you can get higher max values from a Z790, either due to clocks and getting higher end components on higher end boards.
But for most people, is that perceivable in day to day workloads, and does it justify the uplift in price, which can be huge.
@@sometechguy
See eteknix MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 Motherboard Review
or tomshardware MSI MAG B760M Mortar Review.
For the latter the explanation is thermal throttling. Does B760 give too much voltage for the cpu?
I am planning to buy a 14600k, but can't decide if b760 is enough or not.
Excellent information, thanks a lot Sir.
You are most welcome, thank you.
Thank you for the video but t would be good to add few words about MSI pro series. In my country(Bulgaria) MSI b760 tomahawk and MSI Pro Z790-A are at the same 250 euro price and edge Z790 is 350+ euro. All dd5. I don't see any benefit of b760 and edge z790 over Pro Z790-A except from an aesthetic point of view...
Hi, thanks for the comment.
Maybe a follow up might be good on the gaming focused boards vs the Pro, because you are right that often the main difference is just aesthetics and you can get a better deal if you are not worried about this.
MSI MAG B760M MORTAR MAX WIFI DDR5 ----- MSI PRO Z790-A WIFI, 4xDDR5 help me choose a motherboard. I'm leaning towards these two. I want it for the processor i7 13700kf. I will not do overclocking. If the first option can be chosen and the VRM is suitable, I would like to buy this board.
The 13700kf chip allows overclocking, and you will pay a premium for that. So if you don't plan to overclock, and honestly doing this isn't going to be a game changer but just an incremental improvement, then you can save by not buying the K chip. If you do buy the K chip, then buying the B760 board won't allow you to overclock it anyway.
So either go with the K chip and the Z790 board if you want the option to overclock and pay the premium. Or stick with the non-K and go with the B760 for better value for your money.
But this comment doesn't consider other things such as price (including discounts), availability and other feature capabilities. So your mileage may vary. The F-variant CPU also doesn't have integrated graphics, so you need a discrete GPU, but I am sure you know that already.
I would do a little research on K vs non-K and make sure you are getting what you need. The CPU price difference is probably pretty small ($10-$20) compared to the main board price change, which is more like $100.
Thank you for such an extended answer. The prices for these boards are the same. But board 3 has a VRM of 16+1+1 and board B has 12+1+1. Will there be a big difference for this processor? Sorry, I'm writing via Google Translate
In the near future, I am not interested in overclocking the processor. And what’s more, I don’t know how to do this. But I already bought the processor itself and I’m not going to give it back. I was looking for a white board, but I couldn’t find one that fit my budget with good chips, except for this gray one. I didn’t want to take Chinese Colorful, because it’s not familiar to me at all, especially since there’s little information on UA-cam@@sometechguy
If you have an K CPU in hand already, and the boards are the same price then get the Z board as it gives you the options. I have not gone into the details on the VRM power stages on those boards, but usually I would expect for MSI that both the power stage options are going to be fine unless you are pushing very hard on overclocking and the stability becomes a real problem. Honestly, I suspect that the power stage difference is primarily marketing and justification for high price when selling to people who want the absolute best.
The high end boards often come with features that are really not needed unless maybe you are doing very aggressive over clocks and high end cooling, which for most that buy, will never be done.
Tldr?
As a fully designer and gamer, I was scared a little bit to buy a b760 plus ddr 5 from Asus, cus I fear not to use the full potential of my i7 12 gen on it. Thank you mate it's now clearer to me it's Ok to go with it, cus I'm not the guy who overclock things.
My spec:
i7 12th gen K type.
RTX 4070 SUPER
Crucial ddr5 ram
Asus b760 plus mobo atx
360mm aio cooler
It’s easy to get FOMO and just buy a top end board, but as you say, unless you really need the features, it often isn’t giving you anything. 😃
Enjoy the build!
Super useful video
Thank you, appreciate the feedback. 😊
None there to damn expensive
PC components have got silly. GPUs are also an example, but the Godlike board and even the Asus ROG Maximus seem to have lost the plot. And not to say the lower end boards are cheap, because they are not, but they often do everything that is needed and will give the same gaming experience for way less.
Brutally honest review. Too much info, boring presentation. Cut to the chase please. Good luck though. Keep it up. I can see your efforts.❤
Its not boring its real knowledge which will help lots of users steer clear of marketing gimmicks and put their money on better hardware which directly affects performance
clicks on deep dive video, complains about amount of info.... mmmmhhhhh
My same feeling about Steve from gamer nexus : dude goes way to far on information and ya literally fall asleep haha