Due to the size of the core being used, the newest Rocket Lake flagship is only 8 cores compared to the previous generation’s 10, but by contrast, Intel has put a few new features onto the leading flagship chipset, and a number of vendors are straight out of the gate with a wide variety of models and price points. There are two (or three)big differences between the new Z590 and the previous flagship Z490.
First up is the CPU-to-chipset link, which has been doubled from a DMI x4 link to a DMI x8 link. This means an effective CPU-to-chipset bandwidth of a PCIe 3.0 x8 link, and suggests that two PCIe 3.0 x4 drives can be attached and run at full speed. Out of all the 500-series chipsets, we are under the impression that Z590 is the only one that will do this, with all others forcing an x4 link. Also, the x8 link only works with Rocket Lake CPUs, and will downgrade to x4 with a previous generation processor.
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