So this is a workstation MB for their standard desktop processors that enabled ECC? That must mean that all desktop process have the hardware to do ECC and it's just not enabled on a standard MB. Seems like the chipset might even be the same silicon as the Z690 as the features seem to be identical other than ECC and vPro support which could both be bios/firmware controlled. Nothing like marketing segmentation just so they can charge you more for something.
> So this is a workstation MB for their standard desktop processors that enabled ECC?
Apparently so. I followed the links to scrutinize the specs and search for a catch, but they don't even mention Xeon!
It's not uncommon for entry-level workstation/server boards that support Xeon E-series also to support the desktop version, but they will have a note indicating no ECC support for those mainstream CPUs. So, that's what I was looking for, but found no such thing!
> That must mean that all desktop process have the hardware to do ECC
Of course the silicon always has it, because you normally buy them rebranded as Xeon E-series. It's the same CPU, but just with different features exposed and some restrictions (like usually no overclocking).
> Seems like the chipset might even be the same silicon as the Z690
It likely is.
> Nothing like marketing segmentation just so they can charge you more for something.
That the name of the game. The other thing Intel will tell you is that Xeon-branded chips are binned for better stability and reliability. I don't know how much truth there is in that, but I've never seen one fail.
My guess is they're just trying really hard to eliminate reasons for anyone to buy a Ryzen. They matched on core-count (okay, with hybrid cores), surpassed on DRAM and PCIe revisions, surpassed on PCIe lanes, and now they've even surpassed Ryzen on ECC!
I wonder if AMD will follow suit and enable ECC on the non-Pro Ryzen APUs. With rumors that Zen 4 desktop CPUs will *all* be APUs, they'd better do it now, if they hadn't already planned on it!
It looks like it. The specifications in Intel Ark have been modified to show ECC support for many models of Alder Lake, the exceptions being the models without GPU, with the suffix F, which do not support ECC.
Previously ECC support was the only difference between Xeon E/W and the corresponding Core ix models.
There is no reason to introduce Xeon models now, unless they would have enabled AVX-512, to be differentiated from Core models.
And that enabling of AVX512 would be easy enough, as they just have to not fuse that function block off. Which is what Intel announced they'll do going forward for regular AL desktop CPUs. Apparently, they got annoyed that people and some board manufacturers figured out quickly that AVX512 was alive, well and available if one booted with the E cores disabled.
As per ark.intel.com all the low end models have ECC disabled. (The 12500 is the lowest end model) So there is still no ultra low-end ecc model. (up until the 9th generation the i3 had ecc enabled).
Real shame intel is still messing up ecc support up big time. wtf? the F models aren't that much cheaper anyway and they could always just limit supply to dies with a defective gpu. also given the w680 cost, only very few current customers would pair that with an i3... And while we're at it why not enable ecc on the z-series chipsets? they already have the same price & features as the w-series anyway! would simplify things for intel, motherboard manufacturers & b2b/consumers without costing intel and motherboard manufacturers a dime. i'd wager because of lower costs they would even make more money.
The non-Pro APUs seem to have ECC actively disabled.
Yet since the pro variants based on the same silicon have it, it seems a clear case of exactly the type of fusing/segmentation AMD has been happy to criticize Intel for and a major inconsistency for me.
Per VM encryption is another feature that's currently only supported on EPYCs, while the silicon is all there in all variants of the chips.
The main issue for ECC and encrypted VMs is that it requires BIOS and OS support to function or deliver its full potential and there could be extra licensing cost involved from an external vendor that AMD cannot iron out without too much of a cost impact.
And for that bit of doubt, I'm holding back my flame thrower just ever so slightly.
I'm running my Ryzen 9 5950X on ECC DDR4-3200 because it felt safer at a billion bits of RAM.
I have no idea if a bit ever flipped and was corrected. I'd only ever feel *really* safe, when I could test for it working via error injection. But I'm doubtful such a tool would fit in my budget if it were available widely.
Multiple people have tested and proven Ryzen ECC support on motherboards like the Asus X570 WS. Windows event viewer shows events with ID 47, which is for corrected bit errors. You can easily forcibly introduce errors by dropping memory voltage or overclocking, Google for specific guides on Windows and Linux.
P.S. wanted to add that AMD segmentation is different. Non-pro APUs are physically different, as the IMC does not support memory virtualization protection. Pro APUs have a different IMC that block modification of certain MSRs at a microcode level, for a higher level of security. The pro IMCs also contain ECC support, so it’s not like AMD flipped a switch and slapped a label on them. I’d wager it’s more likely because of the monolithic design they decided to shave off as much silicon as possible. Yes it’s segmentation, but for entirely different markets.
"Seems like the chipset might even be the same silicon as the Z690 as the features seem to be identical other than ECC and vPro support which could both be bios/firmware controlled."
"Nothing like marketing segmentation just so they can charge you more for something."
But this also means that they're charging other people less.
If they didn't segment the market, they'd have to charge a price that is the average of the low consumer price and the high business price. Businesses would benefit, but consumers would lose.
Price discrimination (charging different prices for different customers) tends to harm those with high incomes (and concomitantly high willingness-to-pay), but it benefits those with lower incomes (and low willingness-to-pay).
uh no. the Z690 is priced at $51 while the W680 is priced at $50. likely its a service to motherboard manufacturers... which don't really benefit from it, because albeit the workstation boards are somewhat more expensive, they're also much lower volume.
OMG, that Asrock Industrial board has not one, but *two* legacy PCI slots! Wow. I'd seen Skylake boards with a PCI slot but didn't think I'd see a Gen12 board with two!
You might have new equipment bought 15 years ago, which is intended to run for another 15 years. Like, I don't know... million dollar spectroscopes, or maybe just $50,000 electric signal analyzers, microscopes, ... There are still working devices out there that use ISA extension cards (running on ancient computers). I remember 10, 15 years or so ago you could buy industrial PC boards actually having ISA slots.
You must sip, with due reverence, from the perfectly-pious fount of planned obsolescence — so as to destroy the planet and its people more efficiently.
I've seen medical imaging systems that use what are generally standard workstation class PCs as their control units. Those PCs have a handful of add-in cards, some of which are PCI cards.
Yes, as you and Calin wrote, there is definitely a market for professional boards that continue to support so-called legacy cards. So-called, because some of them are simply not available in PCIe or similar. And PCI is perfectly fine for many of these data acquisition cards
Here is the real issue, PCI is fine from an engineering standpoint, and since the interconnects will be used in other applications for years in infrastructure those parts won't necessarily be unavailable to the company producing a professional or industrial product. To a consumer it 'appears' that the ' market has moved on' because the home/desktop market does that. To the professional/industrial producer all that matters is the difference in cost vs. complexity and parts availability when it comes to implementing something, and factors like 3rd party 'glue' for essential components might even dictate sticking with a legacy port or product for many many years past the point of consumer viability.
According to the table, the only difference with Z690 is that it enables ECC? If so, that's a pretty long article that could be summed up in 1 sentence.
That's unfair. The second half is focused on the specific motherboards that have so far been announced. I found the links most helpful.
As for the first half, I'm sure the exposition is helpful for some. If that's not you, then just skip it.
Also, I haven't been following the details of the LGA 1700 motherboards, specifically because I would require a workstation board. So, for me, the specs comparison and other discussion wasn't a waste.
Well, the ECC and PCIe 4 at least catches it up to my two year old Threadripper system. But we all just watched the Mac Studio announcement this week, and they get **SIX** Thunderbolt ports and 10GB ethernet. Where's the TB4 ports Intel? Isn't this your tech? Why is Apple kicking your ass with it?
Oh yeah, it's a bit of a leapfrog, I meant more that they weren't competitive on the ECC and PCIe 4 front until now. If you wanted ECC (as I do) I think you needed Xeon W-2200 series, which is only PCIe 3 (but did have Thunderbolt).
The current Intel platform intended to compete with Threadripper is the Xeon W-3300 series, which does have PCIe 4.0 (and ECC). I know it's not terribly competitive, but a net improvement over Cascade Lake.
Ahh, I see. Obviously I haven't been following that close since I got my Threadripper. Those use the C621A chipset (woulda been nice for the article to have that in the table). I guess it's good this W680 is finally bringing those features to their lower price points, but I can't help but think the lineup is overly complex and they coulda just made the W-3300's their enthusiast/workstation platform (and affordable like Threadripper).
I think the reason they skipped that generation of HEDT is that Ice Lake didn't clock high enough and it woud've been launching on the eve of Alder Lake, making it look even worse.
I wonder if we'll see the return of HEDT, after Sapphire Rapids launches.
DDR5 has some on-die error recovery features to counterbalance an expected reduction in chip quality. It has error recovery features in the same way that your SSD does.
However full ECC, which covers transmission and full-chip errors, still requires specific ECC DIMMs.
> on-die error recovery features to counterbalance an expected reduction in chip quality.
Yup. So, the net-effect should probably be a similar error rate as non-ECC DDR4.
I'd love to see some stats on that, though. I'll bet Amazon is monitoring memory error rates and could tell us how early DDR5 is measuring up to prior DDR generations.
Unfortunately the on-die ECC does not appear to allow for any communication with the host regarding ECC errors. For that you have to get real ECC. I suppose you could infer something about the on-die correction by comparing DDR4 ECC DIMMs vs DDR5 ECC DIMMs though.
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking - you'd use ECC DIMMs to tell you how often 1-bit and 2-bit errors made it past the on-die ECC of DDR5 and compare this with how often DDR4 had 1-bit and 2-bit errors.
The reason I'm skeptical is that Chromebooks tend to use Jasper Lake, whereas in-band ECC support has so far been limited to its industrial-focused cousin: Elkhart Lake. However, if anyone has the clout to make Intel enable a feature like that in a consumer CPU, it's definitely Google.
Finally, a way to get ECC on Intel/Windows platforms without making that Windows for Workstations upgrade to get a supported configuration. I wonder if Microsoft will react to this somehow. I do suspect that the MB manufacturers will grab that 250 $/EUR for themselves by only releasing high-end "creator" and workstation boards, however.
Most of those needing ECC are probably using Windows Enterprise unless you’re talking about OEM. You only need a total of 5 devices to qualify for volume licensing.
This is something you can usually check, yourself. The article has directly links for each of the mentioned boards. Right on the manufacturer's website, it will list the supported memory specifications. Unfortunately, only Supermicro seems clear on the matter of unbuffered vs. registered.
Now, I don't even have to check (though I did), to know that it doesn't. Intel only supports Registered DIMMs on its heavy-duty workstation and server CPUs. The desktop CPUs - even those branded as Xeon E-series - never supported it. And with Alder Lake already having to support DDR4 and DDR5, I don't imagine they want to mess with supporting both Registered and Unbuffered as well.
Thank you. I checked and they do not support registered memory. Which makes this a pretty inconsequential announcement because of how rare unbuffered ECC DIMMs are.
> Which makes this a pretty inconsequential announcement
I hope you weren't thinking you could use ECC DDR5 to get around availability problems of non-ECC DDR5, because that's not why they did it. The move is about broadening ECC support across more products, so people who need/want it aren't as constrained in what hardware configurations they can use.
> because of how rare unbuffered ECC DIMMs are.
There's no fundamental reason DDR5 RDIMMs are more plentiful than unbuffered. That's just a supply-chain problem that will sort itself out, in time.
The "workstation" Xeon E/W/E3 have never supported registered memory. Which is a shame because unbuffered ECC DIMMs always seem to be more expensive than registered ECC DIMMs for a given capacity despite having fewer chips.
RDIMMs traditionally have the downside of slightly higher latency. And you only really need it for reaching higher capacities, although it should also alleviate some of the tradeoffs between rank/occupancy vs. speed that are quite notable in Alder Lake.
BTW, I think AMD's Opterons *only* supported RDIMMs. I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure most Xeon server boards only support RDIMMs, while the Xeon W's probably support both.
RDIMMs do not have higher latencies. What does happen is that workstation memory has much poorer timings. For example the best I could find on newegg is DDR4-3200 @ CL22.
At a fundamental level, it doesn't have the same potential for latencies as low as unbuffered. That's due to the extra register/buffer that sits in between the DIMM's interface and the actual DRAM chips. The main reason for this is to reduce the electrical load on the CPU's memory controller, enabling it to drive more DIMMs per channel and at higher speeds.
This sort of segmentation kills Market exposure. Too bad really, the greed overtakes everything. They could simply offer Z series chipset with ECC features and Workstation class boards and OEMs could make them, but nope. We need to milk.
Absolute trash move from these bean counters making these decisions with this the people who buy will be low and so less talk around them. And people still will opt for used Xeon systems and Rack servers for Homeserver hobby projects.
Intel did this on X299 with VROC garbage. I just hope Threadripper gets some traction again since AMD is supposedly announcing the 5000 series Genesis Peak TR series soon.
> This sort of segmentation kills Market exposure.
Um, did you know this is *less* segmentation than they usually do? It hasn't been since LGA 775 that Intel supported ECC on its whole line of mainstream CPUs! And the fact that they don't make you choose between it and overclocking is bonus.
Even if you buy Ryzen, not all motherboards will support ECC and their non-Pro APUs don't support it on *any* motherboard. Oh, and you can't buy their Pro APUs unless you're a big OEM.
So, Intel is not a lot less segmented on this front than AMD.
> They could simply offer Z series chipset with ECC features
Even if they did, not all Z-series boards would choose to implement ECC support, because it requires additional traces on the motherboard and additional validation effort by the motherboard vendor.
> Absolute trash move from these bean counters
You're splitting hairs. Damn, some people are near impossible to please.
> people still will opt for used Xeon systems and Rack servers for Homeserver hobby projects.
Well... there's no Alder Lake Xeon E, as far as we know. That means you have to go back to using Ice Lake, which is LGA4189, far more expensive, and far lower single-thread perf. Not very homelab or hobbyist-friendly.
> I just hope Threadripper gets some traction again
Threadripper is in a completely different price segment. It's meant to go up against Xeon W, not this. *This* move is so Intel can better compete with people currently putting AM4 Ryzen 5000 CPUs in workstation boards that support ECC.
Some of your points are valid but Xeon part, Ice Lake as you said is not good or homelab is false. Ever seen builds of those machines even on the r/homelab ? None of them run the latest Xeons. Because latest ones are far too expensive, which is why I mention "used Xeon systems". And everything is not just ST performance. It's about PCIe too which is why the used Xeon is mentioned.
As for Motherboard validation, I clearly mentioned they can create a new lineup along the Z line or a bracket above it, to give the Enterprise feature set. These boards will not be used in much quantities due to far lower spread among the homeservers/homelabs that's my guess.
Personally, I still would wait for next gen socket. Because DDR5 is too niche and worthless right now, even if you buy $500+ top G.Skill Samsung / SKH kit and if you use DDR4 Z690 like Strix D4, the DRAM and IMC performance is not that great. And also the LGA1700 ILM design flaw. I need a homelab today, I would go and get a used Xeon.
Aside from the matter of price, buying a M1 Mac means being trapped in Apple's walled garden. I'm certainly not about to pay a premium price for that privilege, thank you.
There's a half-baked Linux port for the M1, but that still doesn't even have a proper GPU driver. And I don't know if anyone has even gotten to try it on the Studio, yet.
It's BGA dumpster with zero IO for PCIe and no Storage options as well, everything must go through the stupid Thunderbolt. Nope. And second it has no future expansion options, a used Xeon will run for decades as many use the 2012 ones today for PLEX and for demanding workloads people opt for later Xeons.
Mac is trash and it's only fit to be in Apple's utopia where sheep are blinded. Pay $6000 for a 12900K + 3090 class that too in limited workloads, that's not how PC works.
Exactly. Speaking of Plex, Alder Lake S on W680 will allow ECC support + QuickSync, which was previously not possible on the vast majority of Xeons. Only certain generation i3s and the extremely rare Xeon G/E series had both. No more idling a GTX/RTX only for nvenc transcoding.
Literally the whole point of the article - ECC support. Also for actual workstation purposes, Apple has zero regard for data integrity. They patched fsync() on macOS to only flush data to disk and not the disk cache as well, so in event of a sudden power loss, it’s bye bye data. I’d love to buy a nice shiny Mac Studio instead of paying out the wazoo for Xeons but when you’re dealing with scientific workloads involving tens of terabytes, a single bit flip in memory or storage can be catastrophic. There is no Apple equivalent of ReFS/ZFS, as the only implementation of openZFS doesn’t support M1 silicon. Mac Studio is a joke for non-creative workloads.
I'm surprised that a separate chipset is required at all for the ECC. We've had integrated memory controller since Nehalem (?) on the CPU, and so I don't understand what role the chipset plays here.
The chipset does not have any role beyond identifying the motherboard as a workstation motherboard.
During initialization, the Intel CPU checks the type of the chipset and it enables ECC only when finding a W680.
The only reason for this is to force all who want ECC to pay more for it, by buying a more expensive motherboard. The difference goes to Intel, because they sell W680 at a higher price than the non-workstation chipset.
Having the market segmentation done only by the chipset and not by the CPU is more convenient for Intel, because they do not have to guess how many Xeon CPUs and how many Core CPUs will be sold.
The W680 chipset is made in an older process and it is much cheaper than the CPUs, if they guess wrong and they make too many W680 or too few, the losses are far less than for a wrong guess of the number of CPUs that will be sold.
This is not new. Their i3's have traditionally supported ECC on a capable motherboard.
> market segmentation done only by the chipset and not by the CPU is more convenient for Intel
It's clearly not that simple, because they also opted to allow overclocking on these motherboards. So, it's like having the option of ECC without the typical Xeon downsides.
I've already said why I think it's sort of a non-issue for ECC to be tied to the chipset, and that's because ECC support has always been tied to the motherboard. Even back in the days of LGA 775.
So, as long as the price delta between chipsets is relatively small, I think it's a non-issue. The main price-gouging on these motherboards will be done by their manufacturers, not Intel.
Intel is the one that started this price gouging for ECC support in the first place. As Linus says, if it were not for Intel, ECC would be the standard for everyone. We’re getting into the 16GB+ era now for most desktops and laptops, and at the rate of a random bit flip every 3 days per gb of ram, we’re all playing with fire with our data just so Intel can price gouge enterprise customers.
It’s always been this way. ECC support has always been there in the silicon, it’s just that Intel turns that support off for consumer models and then turn on ECC support for Xeon models, so they can price gouge enterprise customers. They also locked clock speeds for Xeons after the first couple of generations so they can upcharge businesses for every 0.1 GHz. In fact, for certain generations, they turned on ECC support for i3s but not i5/i7.
The key piece of info missing is the price. This is amazing for workstations and businesses that no longer have to fork over for single thread capped Xeons. But for prosumers, AMD offers fairly well tested support on certain motherboards like the ASUS X570 WS.
The upcoming HP Z2 Mini G9 workstation has a W680 motherboard, up to i9-12900K and ECC DDR5. A nice compact system for when ultimate GPU performance is not crucial and you want good acoustics. Also ideal for a home server.
If you want 1700 socket W680, DDR4 ECC memory in micro-ATX form factor for Alder/Rocket Lake CPUs this still all there is currently https://www.asrockind.com/IMB-X1314 And if you want same with ECC DDR5 memory it's only some of these. https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Se... And those are server boards, where you'd probably end up paying a lotmore for a lot of features you'll never or can't even use. This insane dearth of such boards from all the major board brands has to be all due to Intel delaying launch of Raptor Lake until opportune for competing against AMD, until release of Meteor Lake. Even with yesterday's launch there's still no 65 watt base power 13th Gen CPUs out yet-probably at least not until Q1 2023. And since board brands closely follow Intel's launch scheduling these boards likely be in stores until then. All we can do is let Intel and the board brands know that we're aware of these games and don't like be victimized by them.
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kpb321 - Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - link
So this is a workstation MB for their standard desktop processors that enabled ECC? That must mean that all desktop process have the hardware to do ECC and it's just not enabled on a standard MB. Seems like the chipset might even be the same silicon as the Z690 as the features seem to be identical other than ECC and vPro support which could both be bios/firmware controlled. Nothing like marketing segmentation just so they can charge you more for something.mode_13h - Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - link
> So this is a workstation MB for their standard desktop processors that enabled ECC?Apparently so. I followed the links to scrutinize the specs and search for a catch, but they don't even mention Xeon!
It's not uncommon for entry-level workstation/server boards that support Xeon E-series also to support the desktop version, but they will have a note indicating no ECC support for those mainstream CPUs. So, that's what I was looking for, but found no such thing!
> That must mean that all desktop process have the hardware to do ECC
Of course the silicon always has it, because you normally buy them rebranded as Xeon E-series. It's the same CPU, but just with different features exposed and some restrictions (like usually no overclocking).
> Seems like the chipset might even be the same silicon as the Z690
It likely is.
> Nothing like marketing segmentation just so they can charge you more for something.
That the name of the game. The other thing Intel will tell you is that Xeon-branded chips are binned for better stability and reliability. I don't know how much truth there is in that, but I've never seen one fail.
My guess is they're just trying really hard to eliminate reasons for anyone to buy a Ryzen. They matched on core-count (okay, with hybrid cores), surpassed on DRAM and PCIe revisions, surpassed on PCIe lanes, and now they've even surpassed Ryzen on ECC!
I wonder if AMD will follow suit and enable ECC on the non-Pro Ryzen APUs. With rumors that Zen 4 desktop CPUs will *all* be APUs, they'd better do it now, if they hadn't already planned on it!
flgt - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
So does this mean the end of the low end Xeon W and E processors?AdrianBc - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
It looks like it. The specifications in Intel Ark have been modified to show ECC support for many models of Alder Lake, the exceptions being the models without GPU, with the suffix F, which do not support ECC.Previously ECC support was the only difference between Xeon E/W and the corresponding Core ix models.
There is no reason to introduce Xeon models now, unless they would have enabled AVX-512, to be differentiated from Core models.
eastcoast_pete - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
And that enabling of AVX512 would be easy enough, as they just have to not fuse that function block off. Which is what Intel announced they'll do going forward for regular AL desktop CPUs. Apparently, they got annoyed that people and some board manufacturers figured out quickly that AVX512 was alive, well and available if one booted with the E cores disabled.bernstein - Wednesday, October 5, 2022 - link
As per ark.intel.com all the low end models have ECC disabled. (The 12500 is the lowest end model) So there is still no ultra low-end ecc model. (up until the 9th generation the i3 had ecc enabled).Real shame intel is still messing up ecc support up big time. wtf? the F models aren't that much cheaper anyway and they could always just limit supply to dies with a defective gpu. also given the w680 cost, only very few current customers would pair that with an i3... And while we're at it why not enable ecc on the z-series chipsets? they already have the same price & features as the w-series anyway! would simplify things for intel, motherboard manufacturers & b2b/consumers without costing intel and motherboard manufacturers a dime. i'd wager because of lower costs they would even make more money.
Foeketijn - Wednesday, April 20, 2022 - link
Which Ryzen doesn't support ECC now? I have a couple of Ryzen servers running ECC in Asrockrack rackservers.abufrejoval - Monday, April 25, 2022 - link
The non-Pro APUs seem to have ECC actively disabled.Yet since the pro variants based on the same silicon have it, it seems a clear case of exactly the type of fusing/segmentation AMD has been happy to criticize Intel for and a major inconsistency for me.
Per VM encryption is another feature that's currently only supported on EPYCs, while the silicon is all there in all variants of the chips.
The main issue for ECC and encrypted VMs is that it requires BIOS and OS support to function or deliver its full potential and there could be extra licensing cost involved from an external vendor that AMD cannot iron out without too much of a cost impact.
And for that bit of doubt, I'm holding back my flame thrower just ever so slightly.
I'm running my Ryzen 9 5950X on ECC DDR4-3200 because it felt safer at a billion bits of RAM.
I have no idea if a bit ever flipped and was corrected. I'd only ever feel *really* safe, when I could test for it working via error injection. But I'm doubtful such a tool would fit in my budget if it were available widely.
shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
Multiple people have tested and proven Ryzen ECC support on motherboards like the Asus X570 WS. Windows event viewer shows events with ID 47, which is for corrected bit errors. You can easily forcibly introduce errors by dropping memory voltage or overclocking, Google for specific guides on Windows and Linux.shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
P.S. wanted to add that AMD segmentation is different. Non-pro APUs are physically different, as the IMC does not support memory virtualization protection. Pro APUs have a different IMC that block modification of certain MSRs at a microcode level, for a higher level of security. The pro IMCs also contain ECC support, so it’s not like AMD flipped a switch and slapped a label on them. I’d wager it’s more likely because of the monolithic design they decided to shave off as much silicon as possible. Yes it’s segmentation, but for entirely different markets.Spunjji - Monday, March 14, 2022 - link
"Seems like the chipset might even be the same silicon as the Z690 as the features seem to be identical other than ECC and vPro support which could both be bios/firmware controlled."Bingo.
Mikewind Dale - Thursday, April 14, 2022 - link
"Nothing like marketing segmentation just so they can charge you more for something."But this also means that they're charging other people less.
If they didn't segment the market, they'd have to charge a price that is the average of the low consumer price and the high business price. Businesses would benefit, but consumers would lose.
Price discrimination (charging different prices for different customers) tends to harm those with high incomes (and concomitantly high willingness-to-pay), but it benefits those with lower incomes (and low willingness-to-pay).
bernstein - Wednesday, October 5, 2022 - link
uh no. the Z690 is priced at $51 while the W680 is priced at $50. likely its a service to motherboard manufacturers... which don't really benefit from it, because albeit the workstation boards are somewhat more expensive, they're also much lower volume.mode_13h - Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - link
OMG, that Asrock Industrial board has not one, but *two* legacy PCI slots! Wow. I'd seen Skylake boards with a PCI slot but didn't think I'd see a Gen12 board with two!brucethemoose - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
What are people running off PCI these days, anyway?Calin - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
You might have new equipment bought 15 years ago, which is intended to run for another 15 years.Like, I don't know... million dollar spectroscopes, or maybe just $50,000 electric signal analyzers, microscopes, ...
There are still working devices out there that use ISA extension cards (running on ancient computers). I remember 10, 15 years or so ago you could buy industrial PC boards actually having ISA slots.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, March 17, 2022 - link
You must sip, with due reverence, from the perfectly-pious fount of planned obsolescence — so as to destroy the planet and its people more efficiently.lightningz71 - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
I've seen medical imaging systems that use what are generally standard workstation class PCs as their control units. Those PCs have a handful of add-in cards, some of which are PCI cards.eastcoast_pete - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
Yes, as you and Calin wrote, there is definitely a market for professional boards that continue to support so-called legacy cards. So-called, because some of them are simply not available in PCIe or similar. And PCI is perfectly fine for many of these data acquisition cardsScalarscience - Monday, April 25, 2022 - link
Here is the real issue, PCI is fine from an engineering standpoint, and since the interconnects will be used in other applications for years in infrastructure those parts won't necessarily be unavailable to the company producing a professional or industrial product. To a consumer it 'appears' that the 'market has moved on' because the home/desktop market does that. To the professional/industrial producer all that matters is the difference in cost vs. complexity and parts availability when it comes to implementing something, and factors like 3rd party 'glue' for essential components might even dictate sticking with a legacy port or product for many many years past the point of consumer viability.
Foeketijn - Wednesday, April 20, 2022 - link
A 3Com nic with all that nice offloading magic. I hate it when networktraffic slows down my server.chane - Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - link
My old M-Powered Pro Tools card?ZoZo - Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - link
According to the table, the only difference with Z690 is that it enables ECC? If so, that's a pretty long article that could be summed up in 1 sentence.mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
That's unfair. The second half is focused on the specific motherboards that have so far been announced. I found the links most helpful.As for the first half, I'm sure the exposition is helpful for some. If that's not you, then just skip it.
Also, I haven't been following the details of the LGA 1700 motherboards, specifically because I would require a workstation board. So, for me, the specs comparison and other discussion wasn't a waste.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, March 17, 2022 - link
It’s unfair to consumers, certainly.mode_13h - Friday, March 18, 2022 - link
We were talking about the article.hubick - Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - link
Well, the ECC and PCIe 4 at least catches it up to my two year old Threadripper system. But we all just watched the Mac Studio announcement this week, and they get **SIX** Thunderbolt ports and 10GB ethernet. Where's the TB4 ports Intel? Isn't this your tech? Why is Apple kicking your ass with it?mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
> Well, the ECC and PCIe 4 at least catches it up to my two year old Threadripper system.Except that Alder Lake supports DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, unlike your Threadripper.
hubick - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Oh yeah, it's a bit of a leapfrog, I meant more that they weren't competitive on the ECC and PCIe 4 front until now. If you wanted ECC (as I do) I think you needed Xeon W-2200 series, which is only PCIe 3 (but did have Thunderbolt).mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
The current Intel platform intended to compete with Threadripper is the Xeon W-3300 series, which does have PCIe 4.0 (and ECC). I know it's not terribly competitive, but a net improvement over Cascade Lake.https://www.anandtech.com/show/16822/intel-launche...
hubick - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Ahh, I see. Obviously I haven't been following that close since I got my Threadripper. Those use the C621A chipset (woulda been nice for the article to have that in the table). I guess it's good this W680 is finally bringing those features to their lower price points, but I can't help but think the lineup is overly complex and they coulda just made the W-3300's their enthusiast/workstation platform (and affordable like Threadripper).mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
I think the reason they skipped that generation of HEDT is that Ice Lake didn't clock high enough and it woud've been launching on the eve of Alder Lake, making it look even worse.I wonder if we'll see the return of HEDT, after Sapphire Rapids launches.
HideOut - Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - link
I thought ECC was a STANDARD of DDR5?Ryan Smith - Wednesday, March 9, 2022 - link
DDR5 has some on-die error recovery features to counterbalance an expected reduction in chip quality. It has error recovery features in the same way that your SSD does.However full ECC, which covers transmission and full-chip errors, still requires specific ECC DIMMs.
mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
> on-die error recovery features to counterbalance an expected reduction in chip quality.Yup. So, the net-effect should probably be a similar error rate as non-ECC DDR4.
I'd love to see some stats on that, though. I'll bet Amazon is monitoring memory error rates and could tell us how early DDR5 is measuring up to prior DDR generations.
Doug_S - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Unfortunately the on-die ECC does not appear to allow for any communication with the host regarding ECC errors. For that you have to get real ECC. I suppose you could infer something about the on-die correction by comparing DDR4 ECC DIMMs vs DDR5 ECC DIMMs though.mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking - you'd use ECC DIMMs to tell you how often 1-bit and 2-bit errors made it past the on-die ECC of DDR5 and compare this with how often DDR4 had 1-bit and 2-bit errors.TeXWiller - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
It looks like Chrome systems will get support for doing in-band ECC.mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
That's great news, if true!The reason I'm skeptical is that Chromebooks tend to use Jasper Lake, whereas in-band ECC support has so far been limited to its industrial-focused cousin: Elkhart Lake. However, if anyone has the clout to make Intel enable a feature like that in a consumer CPU, it's definitely Google.
Makaveli - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
how are you posting on this site and haven't seen this.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGwcPzBJCh0
mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Some of us don't watch youtube.TeXWiller - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Finally, a way to get ECC on Intel/Windows platforms without making that Windows for Workstations upgrade to get a supported configuration. I wonder if Microsoft will react to this somehow. I do suspect that the MB manufacturers will grab that 250 $/EUR for themselves by only releasing high-end "creator" and workstation boards, however.shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
Most of those needing ECC are probably using Windows Enterprise unless you’re talking about OEM. You only need a total of 5 devices to qualify for volume licensing.brucethemoose - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Is overclocking ECC RAM pretty much the same as regular RAM?I guess that may be impossible to answer, seeing how this is the first time we got overclockable ECC DDR5.
hubick - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
I have my 2666 ECC running at 2933. In some ways, the ECC is a bit of a guarantee the OC isn't causing problems.drajitshnew - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
@anandtech could you try to find out if these boards also support registered memorymode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
This is something you can usually check, yourself. The article has directly links for each of the mentioned boards. Right on the manufacturer's website, it will list the supported memory specifications. Unfortunately, only Supermicro seems clear on the matter of unbuffered vs. registered.Now, I don't even have to check (though I did), to know that it doesn't. Intel only supports Registered DIMMs on its heavy-duty workstation and server CPUs. The desktop CPUs - even those branded as Xeon E-series - never supported it. And with Alder Lake already having to support DDR4 and DDR5, I don't imagine they want to mess with supporting both Registered and Unbuffered as well.
drajitshnew - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
Thank you. I checked and they do not support registered memory.Which makes this a pretty inconsequential announcement because of how rare unbuffered ECC DIMMs are.
mode_13h - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
> Which makes this a pretty inconsequential announcementI hope you weren't thinking you could use ECC DDR5 to get around availability problems of non-ECC DDR5, because that's not why they did it. The move is about broadening ECC support across more products, so people who need/want it aren't as constrained in what hardware configurations they can use.
> because of how rare unbuffered ECC DIMMs are.
There's no fundamental reason DDR5 RDIMMs are more plentiful than unbuffered. That's just a supply-chain problem that will sort itself out, in time.
shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
Less of a supply chain issue and more of a demand issue. Vast majority of ECC ram is going into servers, which use RDIMM and not UDIMM.shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
Not exactly rare considering all their prior workstation E3s also required UDIMM ECC which you can easily source on Newegg or even eBay.The Von Matrices - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
The "workstation" Xeon E/W/E3 have never supported registered memory. Which is a shame because unbuffered ECC DIMMs always seem to be more expensive than registered ECC DIMMs for a given capacity despite having fewer chips.mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
RDIMMs traditionally have the downside of slightly higher latency. And you only really need it for reaching higher capacities, although it should also alleviate some of the tradeoffs between rank/occupancy vs. speed that are quite notable in Alder Lake.BTW, I think AMD's Opterons *only* supported RDIMMs. I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure most Xeon server boards only support RDIMMs, while the Xeon W's probably support both.
drajitshnew - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
RDIMMs do not have higher latencies. What does happen is that workstation memory has much poorer timings. For example the best I could find on newegg is DDR4-3200 @ CL22.mode_13h - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
> RDIMMs do not have higher latencies.At a fundamental level, it doesn't have the same potential for latencies as low as unbuffered. That's due to the extra register/buffer that sits in between the DIMM's interface and the actual DRAM chips. The main reason for this is to reduce the electrical load on the CPU's memory controller, enabling it to drive more DIMMs per channel and at higher speeds.
drajitshnew - Saturday, March 12, 2022 - link
Yes, but with RDIMM you can set the command rate to T1 from T2 which actually makes up for the command buffer latency for dual ranked modules.Silver5urfer - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
This sort of segmentation kills Market exposure. Too bad really, the greed overtakes everything. They could simply offer Z series chipset with ECC features and Workstation class boards and OEMs could make them, but nope. We need to milk.Absolute trash move from these bean counters making these decisions with this the people who buy will be low and so less talk around them. And people still will opt for used Xeon systems and Rack servers for Homeserver hobby projects.
Intel did this on X299 with VROC garbage. I just hope Threadripper gets some traction again since AMD is supposedly announcing the 5000 series Genesis Peak TR series soon.
mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
> This sort of segmentation kills Market exposure.Um, did you know this is *less* segmentation than they usually do? It hasn't been since LGA 775 that Intel supported ECC on its whole line of mainstream CPUs! And the fact that they don't make you choose between it and overclocking is bonus.
Even if you buy Ryzen, not all motherboards will support ECC and their non-Pro APUs don't support it on *any* motherboard. Oh, and you can't buy their Pro APUs unless you're a big OEM.
So, Intel is not a lot less segmented on this front than AMD.
> They could simply offer Z series chipset with ECC features
Even if they did, not all Z-series boards would choose to implement ECC support, because it requires additional traces on the motherboard and additional validation effort by the motherboard vendor.
> Absolute trash move from these bean counters
You're splitting hairs. Damn, some people are near impossible to please.
> people still will opt for used Xeon systems and Rack servers for Homeserver hobby projects.
Well... there's no Alder Lake Xeon E, as far as we know. That means you have to go back to using Ice Lake, which is LGA4189, far more expensive, and far lower single-thread perf. Not very homelab or hobbyist-friendly.
> I just hope Threadripper gets some traction again
Threadripper is in a completely different price segment. It's meant to go up against Xeon W, not this. *This* move is so Intel can better compete with people currently putting AM4 Ryzen 5000 CPUs in workstation boards that support ECC.
mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
> So, Intel is not a lot less segmented on this front than AMD.Er, I meant they are "now a lot less segmented on this front than AMD."
Silver5urfer - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
Some of your points are valid but Xeon part, Ice Lake as you said is not good or homelab is false. Ever seen builds of those machines even on the r/homelab ? None of them run the latest Xeons. Because latest ones are far too expensive, which is why I mention "used Xeon systems". And everything is not just ST performance. It's about PCIe too which is why the used Xeon is mentioned.As for Motherboard validation, I clearly mentioned they can create a new lineup along the Z line or a bracket above it, to give the Enterprise feature set. These boards will not be used in much quantities due to far lower spread among the homeservers/homelabs that's my guess.
Personally, I still would wait for next gen socket. Because DDR5 is too niche and worthless right now, even if you buy $500+ top G.Skill Samsung / SKH kit and if you use DDR4 Z690 like Strix D4, the DRAM and IMC performance is not that great. And also the LGA1700 ILM design flaw. I need a homelab today, I would go and get a used Xeon.
lemurbutton - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Why would anyone want this? Get a Mac Studio.The Von Matrices - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
No ECC and also a lot more expensive.mode_13h - Thursday, March 10, 2022 - link
Aside from the matter of price, buying a M1 Mac means being trapped in Apple's walled garden. I'm certainly not about to pay a premium price for that privilege, thank you.There's a half-baked Linux port for the M1, but that still doesn't even have a proper GPU driver. And I don't know if anyone has even gotten to try it on the Studio, yet.
Silver5urfer - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
It's BGA dumpster with zero IO for PCIe and no Storage options as well, everything must go through the stupid Thunderbolt. Nope. And second it has no future expansion options, a used Xeon will run for decades as many use the 2012 ones today for PLEX and for demanding workloads people opt for later Xeons.Mac is trash and it's only fit to be in Apple's utopia where sheep are blinded. Pay $6000 for a 12900K + 3090 class that too in limited workloads, that's not how PC works.
shadowx360 - Tuesday, May 3, 2022 - link
Exactly. Speaking of Plex, Alder Lake S on W680 will allow ECC support + QuickSync, which was previously not possible on the vast majority of Xeons. Only certain generation i3s and the extremely rare Xeon G/E series had both. No more idling a GTX/RTX only for nvenc transcoding.TeXWiller - Saturday, March 12, 2022 - link
The bigger Pro model is still coming. You may want to wait for that.shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
Literally the whole point of the article - ECC support. Also for actual workstation purposes, Apple has zero regard for data integrity. They patched fsync() on macOS to only flush data to disk and not the disk cache as well, so in event of a sudden power loss, it’s bye bye data. I’d love to buy a nice shiny Mac Studio instead of paying out the wazoo for Xeons but when you’re dealing with scientific workloads involving tens of terabytes, a single bit flip in memory or storage can be catastrophic. There is no Apple equivalent of ReFS/ZFS, as the only implementation of openZFS doesn’t support M1 silicon. Mac Studio is a joke for non-creative workloads.heartinpiece - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
I'm surprised that a separate chipset is required at all for the ECC. We've had integrated memory controller since Nehalem (?) on the CPU, and so I don't understand what role the chipset plays here.Does anyone have an insight here?
AdrianBc - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
The chipset does not have any role beyond identifying the motherboard as a workstation motherboard.During initialization, the Intel CPU checks the type of the chipset and it enables ECC only when finding a W680.
The only reason for this is to force all who want ECC to pay more for it, by buying a more expensive motherboard. The difference goes to Intel, because they sell W680 at a higher price than the non-workstation chipset.
Having the market segmentation done only by the chipset and not by the CPU is more convenient for Intel, because they do not have to guess how many Xeon CPUs and how many Core CPUs will be sold.
The W680 chipset is made in an older process and it is much cheaper than the CPUs, if they guess wrong and they make too many W680 or too few, the losses are far less than for a wrong guess of the number of CPUs that will be sold.
mode_13h - Friday, March 11, 2022 - link
This is not new. Their i3's have traditionally supported ECC on a capable motherboard.> market segmentation done only by the chipset and not by the CPU is more convenient for Intel
It's clearly not that simple, because they also opted to allow overclocking on these motherboards. So, it's like having the option of ECC without the typical Xeon downsides.
I've already said why I think it's sort of a non-issue for ECC to be tied to the chipset, and that's because ECC support has always been tied to the motherboard. Even back in the days of LGA 775.
So, as long as the price delta between chipsets is relatively small, I think it's a non-issue. The main price-gouging on these motherboards will be done by their manufacturers, not Intel.
shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
Intel is the one that started this price gouging for ECC support in the first place. As Linus says, if it were not for Intel, ECC would be the standard for everyone. We’re getting into the 16GB+ era now for most desktops and laptops, and at the rate of a random bit flip every 3 days per gb of ram, we’re all playing with fire with our data just so Intel can price gouge enterprise customers.shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
It’s always been this way. ECC support has always been there in the silicon, it’s just that Intel turns that support off for consumer models and then turn on ECC support for Xeon models, so they can price gouge enterprise customers. They also locked clock speeds for Xeons after the first couple of generations so they can upcharge businesses for every 0.1 GHz. In fact, for certain generations, they turned on ECC support for i3s but not i5/i7.Oxford Guy - Sunday, March 13, 2022 - link
So glad to see overclocking support since Intel discontinued its overclocking warranty.Just in time!
pwil - Friday, April 8, 2022 - link
Cheap A320 mainboards works with ECC memory.jamesindevon - Tuesday, April 12, 2022 - link
Green motherboards! They look so much better than the gamer boards.shadowx360 - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
The key piece of info missing is the price. This is amazing for workstations and businesses that no longer have to fork over for single thread capped Xeons. But for prosumers, AMD offers fairly well tested support on certain motherboards like the ASUS X570 WS.fazalmajid - Wednesday, May 25, 2022 - link
The upcoming HP Z2 Mini G9 workstation has a W680 motherboard, up to i9-12900K and ECC DDR5. A nice compact system for when ultimate GPU performance is not crucial and you want good acoustics. Also ideal for a home server.chane - Sunday, October 9, 2022 - link
I can't believe there's still only one mico-ATX W680 board launched by now, and I can't find that IMB-X1314 for sale anywhere.chane - Friday, October 21, 2022 - link
If you want 1700 socket W680, DDR4 ECC memory in micro-ATX form factor for Alder/Rocket Lake CPUs this still all there is currently https://www.asrockind.com/IMB-X1314 And if you want same with ECC DDR5 memory it's only some of these. https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Se... And those are server boards, where you'd probably end up paying a lotmore for a lot of features you'll never or can't even use. This insane dearth of such boards from all the major board brands has to be all due to Intel delaying launch of Raptor Lake until opportune for competing against AMD, until release of Meteor Lake. Even with yesterday's launch there's still no 65 watt base power 13th Gen CPUs out yet-probably at least not until Q1 2023. And since board brands closely follow Intel's launch scheduling these boards likely be in stores until then. All we can do is let Intel and the board brands know that we're aware of these games and don't like be victimized by them.