In the middle of Christmas, it’s no surprise that many of you are considering buying a new PC. It is true that Intel holds the performance crown right now, just as the prices are steep and there is no DDR5 memory available. This will all change shortly, since the specifications of all the chipsets that Intel has prepared for the Alder Lake processors have been disclosed, what is yours? H670, B660 or H610?
There aren’t too many surprises compared to what one might expect from one of the three nominated against the top of the line Z690. Likewise, let’s do it in order, as it’s worth reviewing all they can offer.
Intel Z690 vs. H670 vs. B660 vs. H610
Based on the fact that all of them will have support for DDR4 or DDR5 (normal because the CPU has IMC and not the motherboard), what we will not have depending on the choice is the ability to overclock the CPU. Oddly enough, Intel will limit the possibility of doing less in the Z690 in all chipsets, so this will greatly determine the sales of processors linked to the chipsets.
When it comes to overclocking RAM memory, Intel has been more flexible, because with the exception of the H610, the rest will be able to do it without problems and in the speed indicated by each model. Making the jump to the PCIe lanes and taking in to account that the controllers also go into the CPU, the Z690 and H670 will have a dual configuration in case we want to install more than one PCIe 5.0 card: 1×16 or 2×8
The B660 and H610 will only be able to have one slot with 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes. In PCIe 4.0 we will only have 1 x4 less in H610 which will not have this configuration. We cannot forget the essential DMI 4.0, which has a higher bandwidth thanks to its 8 PCIe lanes, which is repeated in both the Z690 and the H670 but not in the rest of the chipsets of the 600 range.
This is important to take into account, as this will lead to the rest of the benefits that we are going to see.
Half the bandwidth
This limitation in DMI 4.0 and its lines has a direct impact on PCIe 4.0 and 3.0, since we will go from 16 and 12 to 12-6-0 and 12-8-8 respectively between H670, B660 and H610. USBs of different speeds suffer the same fate and cut themselves off as the range of the chipset is lowered.
So from 4 USB 20 G that we will have in Z690 we go to 2 in H670 and B660 and none in H610, where in the case of speaking of USB3 at 10G it is even more obvious with 10-4-4-2. The rest of the USB versions are more or less established with a minimum, in particular the much more widespread USB 2.0.
Another small change between chipsets that will have to be evaluated is that of the SATA 3 ports, since Z690 and H670 keep a maximum of 8 and the two remaining chipsets only 4. The above makes the segmentations quite clear, which are now much more decisive. . depending on the CPU to choose and the type of RAM memory. The main problem is not the disparity in performance, but the existing limitations, where only the Z690 chipset can support CPU overclocking, which limits the choice too much compared to what AMD offers.
