CPU/Mobo Leaked Intel Roadmap Confirms Ivy Bridge Packs PCI Express 3.0

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Source: Leaked Intel Roadmap Confirms Ivy Bridge Packs PCI Express 3.0 - Softpedia

Although many speculated that Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors would feature an integrated PCI Express Gen 3 controller, up until recently nobody knew for sure this was the case, but a new Intel roadmap that made its way to the Web comes to confirm these rumors and provide us with additional details about these CPUs.

Ivy Bridge will be Intel's first processor built using the 22nm fabrication node and is actually a die shrink of Sandy Bridge with a couple of minor improvements.

One of the most important of these is the addition of a third-generation PCI Express controller that raises the bandwidth available for each PCIe lane from the 500MB/s (4Gb/s) of the 2.x version to 1GB/s (8Gb/s).

According to the slide provided by SemiAccurate, Ivy Bridge's integrated PCI Express controller features 16 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes, that can be routed to either an x16 slot or to a pair of x8 slots, as well as four additional PCIe Gen 2.0 lanes.

Outside of the new controller, Intel's upcoming chip will also get a new GPU that is now compatible with DirectX 11, features 30% more EUs than its predecessor and can drive up to three displays simultaneously (the Sandy Bridge GPU can only run two displays).

The video encoding, transcoding and decoding capabilities of the graphics core have also been enhanced.

Moving to the new Panther Point PCH that will be launched together with Ivy Bridge, this now features native USB 3.0 support as well as two SATA 6Gbps and four SATA 3Gbps ports , but, sadly, it still uses the same DMI 2.0 link to connect to the CPU.

This could potentially limit the I/O performance of the system when high performance SATA 6Gbps drives are used in tandem with fast USB 3.0 peripherals as the maximum theoretical transfer rate of the DMI 2.0 interface is set at a not-so-impressive 20Gb/s.

Right now, nobody can tell for sure when Ivy Bridge launches, but recent rumors seem to suggest that Intel is thinking about releasing the processors a bit early to counter AMD's upcoming desktop Zambezi chips based on the Bulldozer architecture.
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So what is the remarkable benefit of Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge? can any one explain/compare here?
 
Night and day I guess, at least 20-40% faster on current apps out of the box hopefully, if not better!
 
Don't even think about upgrading to IB before August or so, and it could well turn out to be into Q1 2012 if things get delayed!
 
The desktop version of Bulldozer, code-named Zambezi, is expected to be launched on June 11 of this year

On the other hand, Intel's Ivy Bridge processors are based on the current Sandy Bridge architecture, carry two or four processing cores and are built using the 22nm fabrication process.

Ivy Bridge was tweaked to feature a DirectX 11 compatible GPU, that packs 30% more EUs and supports up to three independent displays and HDMI 1.4a, a PCI Express Gen 3 integrated controller as well as improved video encoding, decoding and transcoding capabilities.

Intel May Release Ivy Bridge Sooner to Counter AMD's Bulldozer CPUs - Softpedia
 
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