GIGABYTE, ASUS, EVGA or MSI, have started selling their motherboards with Intel Z97 chipset the company prepared for the launching onto the market of their new Haswell Refresh microprocessors.
The price range goes from a 100 USD to 380 USD, depending on their format and performance. The biggest innovation of the chipset (though not all boards have it) is the SATA-Express support, the new specification of the bus that takes advantage of the SATA and PCI-E to increase the data transference speed of storage devices.
The M.2 format of the same Intel is another innovation. Anyhow, the improvements are not as significant as to change boards if you already use one of the 8x series with an LGA 1150 socket, given that the Haswell Refresh processors will be compatible with them through the BIOS update.
The Intel Z97 boards will be launched along with 20 new and different models of Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 Intel has already been distributing in the channel for desktop computers. Apart from the Intel Z97, the company will also introduce the H97 to support the Haswell Refresh Mobile for laptop computers.
Already in the third trimester, the X99 chipset will come, this time for LGA 2011 socket and destined to take in the Haswell-E, the first Intel processors of eight physical nuclei for the consuming market.