Early Ivy Bridge Sample Tested

[Ice009]

Might wait for second revision CPUs/Haswell then! >.<

Can Sandy + Z77 = PCI-E 3.0?

-PB

No, I don't think it can. I was going to upgrade my X58 gaming rig to a Z77 rig with a 3770K, but not sure about anymore if Ivy Bridge is this hot. I would go for a 2600K right now, but I don't think you can have PCIe 3.0 with a SB CPU, so that kind of screws it up.

Do you guys think PCIe 2.0 x8 x8 would be a bottleneck for high end cards like 2 x GTX 680 or 2 x GTX 580? Would my current CPU (i7 920) at 4Ghz be a bottleneck for those cards?

I'd be OK with an Ivy Bridge setup at 4.5Ghz if it didn't run too hot, but I usually use Air Cooling, so I'm not even sure if that will be good enough at 4.5Ghz if the temps are reaching 96 degrees at 4.7Ghz with a Corsair H100.