Z690 vs Z790 motherboard for gaming

[kevinj93]

I'm currently on intel 8th gen (i7-8700) (Z370) and looking to upgrade to 13th gen (i7-13700k) (Z690/Z790)

 

I was wondering what the differences are between both the chipsets performance wise, and whether it's worth getting a Z790 mobo over the Z690, since the Z790 motherboards are significantly more expensive in Europe. Other than higher speed supported RAMs, any reason to get a Z790 motherboard?

[dr23]

yes don't go for the Z690, the Z790 is designed for the new architecture and is therefore a much better choice. If you were planning on getting the 12th gen, then i'd say go for the 690 but not if you want to use the newest generation (which is a great choice). Spend a little more, you will have a more durable system

[jaslion]

11 minutes ago, dr23 said:

yes don't go for the Z690, the Z790 is designed for the new architecture and is therefore a much better choice. If you were planning on getting the 12th gen, then i'd say go for the 690 but not if you want to use the newest generation (which is a great choice). Spend a little more, you will have a more durable system

It doesnt matter.

 

It doesnt matter a single bit if you pick z690 or z790. Not a single bit of performance gained or lost in gaming.

 

Also just get ddr4 to save money. Currenr gen ddr5 is basically like earlt ddr4 at 2133+2666 speeds not something youd reuse in a new pc so not worth to pay early adopters tax on it.

 

[GuiltySpark_]

More I/O. There is zero performance difference. 

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17601/intel-core-i9-13900k-and-i5-13600k-review/3

 

I'm really not sure where @dr23is getting their claims.

[HumdrumPenguin]

11 hours ago, kevinj93 said:

I'm currently on intel 8th gen (i7-8700) (Z370) and looking to upgrade to 13th gen (i7-13700k) (Z690/Z790)

 

I was wondering what the differences are between both the chipsets performance wise, and whether it's worth getting a Z790 mobo over the Z690, since the Z790 motherboards are significantly more expensive in Europe. Other than higher speed supported RAMs, any reason to get a Z790 motherboard?

I'm on a 9900K, and soon I will be upgrading to a 13700k (I sort of have to, as I got the new 4090). The one thing that make me want to go for a better Z790 board (MSI Z790 Carbon to be more precise) is the compatibility with faster storage that's coming out soon (Gen 5 M.2 slots on the board). I'll be restricted to DDR5 on that board, and I'll have to update that too as well, but it's a cost I can stomach.

[NF-A12x25]

59 minutes ago, HumdrumPenguin said:

I'll be restricted to DDR5 on that board, and I'll have to update that too as well, but it's a cost I can stomach.

why not upgrade to a DDR4 version of the same board lol, I know MSI made DDR4 and DDR5 versions of essentially the same z690 board, the DDR5 version was the Carbon and the DDR4 version was the Edge- are they doing the same with 700 series?

[HumdrumPenguin]

9 minutes ago, NF-A12x25 said:

why not upgrade to a DDR4 version of the same board lol, I know MSI made DDR4 and DDR5 versions of essentially the same z690 board, the DDR5 version was the Carbon and the DDR4 version was the Edge- are they doing the same with 700 series?

“Lesser” boards with ddr4 compatibility wont support pcie 5 on nvme drives. I also update CPUs only once every 4 years, so I might as well get DDR5 now.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

12 hours ago, dr23 said:

yes don't go for the Z690, the Z790 is designed for the new architecture and is therefore a much better choice. If you were planning on getting the 12th gen, then i'd say go for the 690 but not if you want to use the newest generation (which is a great choice). Spend a little more, you will have a more durable system

It's not a new architecture. It's just a refinement of the previous one. There is virtually no benefit in going Z790 for gaming as the additional I/O wouldn't matter in a gaming workload anyways. Sure there might be better support for higher DDR5 OC with the 700 series chipset but as others have mentioned, the benefit for going DDR5 is already significantly dwarfed by the additional cost in the memory and motherboards. Plus it'll take a while for software to catch up to take full advantage and DDR5 speeds have further to go over time much like what happened with DDR4. So you're taking an already bad value proposition at its infancy and worsening it even more. 

[NF-A12x25]

26 minutes ago, HumdrumPenguin said:

“Lesser” boards with ddr4 compatibility wont support pcie 5 on nvme drives. I also update CPUs only once every 4 years, so I might as well get DDR5 now.

Really? That’s quite interesting. Didn’t think there was a difference on the mid to high-end z790 boards

 

Just put GPU in the second x16 slot and boot off an adapter card in PCIe_1_5.0 :trollface:

[LAwLz]

As others have said, the only differences are:

1) Support for higher speed RAM, but realistically the higher speed RAM will probably work on other boards as well. 

 

2) Some more PCIe 4.0 lanes from the chipset. Probably not something you actually need. It also has fewer PCIe 3.0 lanes. 

 

3) Z790 no longer supports optane, but nobody used that anyway so nothing of value was lost. 

 

 

Something very important to keep in mind however is that Z790 boards will support Raptor Lake CPUs out of the box, while Z690 might require a BIOS update. This is important to keep in mind because a lot of the cheaper motherboards requires a CPU in other to update the BIOS. If you're buying a Z690 motherboard you should therefore get one that supports BIOS upgrading without a CPU. For example Asus calls this BIOS Flashback and Gigabyte calls it Q-Flash Plus (the plus is important). 

 

If you don't get a motherboard that supports flashing the BIOS without a cpu you might end up needing to somehow find an Alder Lake CPU just so you upgrade your motherboard to support raptor lake. 

[Jerakl]

13 hours ago, NF-A12x25 said:

why not upgrade to a DDR4 version of the same board lol, I know MSI made DDR4 and DDR5 versions of essentially the same z690 board, the DDR5 version was the Carbon and the DDR4 version was the Edge- are they doing the same with 700 series?

Gigabyte did too. 

I'm actually going to z390->z690 soon and I'm buying a ddr4 board to avoid having to spend 2x the money for equally fast ram. 

 

As others have mentioned the overall differences are minimal. With performance differences being nil. I was actually asking a similar question a couple weeks ago and iirc the main difference is basically just some storage and bandwidth options - maybe I/O too.

 

AFAIK chipsets rarely limit performance as is and mostly just dictate feature set. You could by a H/B6xx board and as long as you don't wanna oveclock you probably wouldn't notice much difference besides I/O if something. 

On 10/21/2022 at 5:45 AM, dr23 said:

yes don't go for the Z690, the Z790 is designed for the new architecture and is therefore a much better choice. If you were planning on getting the 12th gen, then i'd say go for the 690 but not if you want to use the newest generation (which is a great choice). Spend a little more, you will have a more durable system

You have no idea what you're talking about lmao

[NF-A12x25]

4 hours ago, Jerakl said:

Gigabyte did too. 

yep lol I got the z690 Aero G (since I found one on ebay for a STEAL earlier this year) which is a DDR4 version but there’s also a DDR5 version that’s slightly differently named

[Jerakl]

50 minutes ago, NF-A12x25 said:

yep lol I got the z690 Aero G (since I found one on ebay for a STEAL earlier this year) which is a DDR4 version but there’s also a DDR5 version that’s slightly differently named

I think the gigabyte aorus models share the same name except for one says "DDR5" and the other "DDR4" LMFAO

 

glad they're offered tho bc I don't wanna fork over an extra 100$ for what's essentially gunna be slower ram. 

[toasty99]

ddr4 z690 is where it is at.