The high-end desktop (HEDT) that will succeed Intel’s current “Broadwell-E” LGA2011v3 platform will be the X-Series “Basin Falls” platform. This platform will consist of both “Skylake-X” and “Kaby Lake-X” processors and the chipset will be based on the upcoming 200-series chipset which we will see in just over a month. Intel will be changing the socket, just like they did with their previous three HEDT platforms (LGA1366 for “Nehalem” and “Westmere/Gulftown,” LGA2011 for “Sandy Bridge-E” and “Ivy Bridge-E,” and LGA2011v3 for “Haswell-E” and “Broadwell-E”). The new socket will be the LGA2066 socket.
Just like previous HEDT processors “Skylake-X” and “Kaby Lake-X” will be multi-core processor which do not have integrated graphics. They will also have double the memory bus width and up to triple the PCIe lanes as typical desktop processors (Skylake-D ie Core i7-6700). Intel will be launching “Skylake-X” and “Kaby Lake-X” in quick succession, which is an interesting move from Intel. There is sort of a catch though, “Skylake-X” will come in 6-core, 8-core, and 10-core variants, where as “Kaby Lake-X” will only be offered in quad-core. The “Kaby Lake-X” chips will also only have a dual-channel memory bus and less PCIe lanes.
The “Skylake-X” chips will have 44 PCIe gen 3.0 lanes. Another great thing to see is that the chipset will offer more downstream PCIe lanes than what we are used to seeing on Intel PCH chips for the past few generations. You’ll have a total of 22 PCIe gen 3.0 downstream lanes. These will definitely come in handy to drive bandwidth hungry onboard devices like Thunderbolt controllers and multiple PCIe solid state drives.
Intel is planning to launch the Core i7 “Skylake-X” processors as early as Q3-2017 in the July-September time-frame.
