Differences between Z87 and Z97

[Wingfan]

What are the major differences? other than Z97 is the newer obviously 

 

Thanks for any help

[Raudi_]

What are the major differences? other than Z97 is the newer obviously 

 

Thanks for any help

Z97 has Broadwell support, MSATA Drives, SATA Express and alot of the Z97 boards have better onboard audio.

[H4X3R]

M.2, more usb 3.0 and usb 2.0, more sata3 and sata express

[DirkW]

Z97 has Broadwell support, MASATA M.2 Drives, SATA Express and alot of the Z97 boards have better onboard audio.

M.2 not MSATA - and while the last bit is true, it's not part of the actual chipset, just what motherboard manufacturers choose to add.

 

M.2, more usb 3.0 and usb 2.0, more sata3 and sata express

Actually, the number of USB (6/8) and SATA ports (6) are the same on both chipsets. Any difference is just a motherboard manufacturer's choice to add (via 3rd party hardware) to specific boards.

 

@Wingfan

It comes down to SATA-Express, Broadwell-Support (and Devils Canyon / Haswell Refresh support out of the box). The rest was partially even available on some Z87 boards already,

[Cheddle]

AFAIK the two differences are 5th gen Intel CPU Support and M.2 Drive slot.

 

There may be performance differences between the two but given how chipset architecture is these days this is negligible.

 

fyi: I noticed a difference in performance when going from Crossfire over chipset connected PCIE on z87 compared to z97 - both were slower than using CPU connected PCIE slots - cant recall the exact differences... they are written somewhere on my home pc...

[DirkW]

fyi: I noticed a difference in performance when going from Crossfire over chipset connected PCIE on z87 compared to z97 - both were slower than using CPU connected PCIE slots - cant recall the exact differences... they are written somewhere on my home pc...

Of course they were slower.    It's a total of 16 lanes PCIe 3.0 from the CPU (which you could have as 8/8 or 8/4/4) vs. a total of 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes from both Z87 and Z97 (from which you usually only get to use a maximum of 4x in one slot.) So in worst case, you compare PCIe 3.0 8x to PCIe 2.0 4x - the latter having only one quarter of the bandwidth of the former...

[Cheddle]

Of course they were slower.    It's a total of 16 lanes PCIe 3.0 from the CPU (which you could have as 8/8 or 8/4/4) vs. a total of 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes from both Z87 and Z97 (from which you usually only get to use a maximum of 4x in one slot.) So in worst case, you compare PCIe 3.0 8x to PCIe 2.0 4x - the latter having only one quarter of the bandwidth of the former...

 

I think you think I know less than I do

 

My z97 was not SLI certified, my z87 is - on my z87 and z97 the second GPU in the pcie 3.0 x4 slot connects the card to the cpu (and primary pcie slot) via the chipset (southbridge). BOTH were obviously slower than pcie 3.0 8/8 via CPU (northbridge) directly

 

My point was that the z87 pcie 3.0 x4 slot was SLOWER in practice than the z97 pcie 3.0 4x slot... from memory in fire strike I got about 22k GPU score with pcie x8/x8 (z87) about 19k GPU score with x16/x4 (z97) and about 17k GPU score with x16/x4 (z87)

 

Being mindful that this is xDMA (crossfire over pcie - bridgeless, afaik this can saturate even a pcie 3.0 x16/x16 bus)

 

As such I assume the z87 southbridge is slower than the z97 - however in 99% of situations this is irrelevant and has no bearing on real world performance.

[Wingfan]

Thanks guys, alot of useful info

[Wingfan]

AFAIK the two differences are 5th gen Intel CPU Support and M.2 Drive slot.

 

This is what i was thinking but wasnt quite sure