14 DAY TRIAL // Intel may only intend to release the fourth generation of Core series CPUs during the middle of the year (2013), but that doesn't mean motherboards won't come out sooner.
In theory, any mainboard with support for socket LGA 1150 central processing units should be able to handle a Haswell CPU.
There are some features that motherboard makers would do well to prepare for though, which is why Gigabyte it doing what Biostar has also done.
That is to say, Gigabyte has brought three Haswell-ready mainboards to CeBIT 2013, in Hannover, Germany. All of them use the Z87 chipset.
The cheapest of the trio is called Z87X-D3H, has an 8-phase VRM, three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, just as many PCI Express 2.0 x1, and legacy PCI slot.
Four memory slots are present as well, along with six SATA 6 Gbps ports and six USB 3.0 connectors (four at the back, tow via headers).
The Z87X-UD3H also has an 8-phase VRM, but gets eight SATA 6 Gbps ports and has two eSATA ports and a single Gigabit Ethernet connector.
As for the Z87X-UD5H, it is the strongest of the group, with a 16-phase CPU VRM, the same expansion slots as the others, and ten SATA 6 Gbps connectors (four driven by third-party controllers as the X87 PCH can only handle six). Two HDMI outputs are used instead of HDMI and D-Sub.
All three Gigabyte products use a dual-link DVI ports, a DisplayPort, and 8-channel HD audio with TOSLINK digital output.
All in all, the newcomers are well equipped to act as foundation for high-end computers, even those with multi-GPU configurations.
The three PCI Express 3.0 slots can operate in one of three modes: x16/NC/NC (single card), x8/x8/NC (dual-GPU via NVIDIA SLI or AMD CorssFireX) or x8/x4/x4 (triple-GPU). No prices or availability dates mentioned, sadly.
