Intel 12th Gen CPUs, Z690 and DDR5 Preview

Z690 – What’s New?

There’s a wide range of new motherboards hitting the market for this launch, over 90 boards in total! Of course, there will be even more in the coming weeks and months, as further models are rolled out too. While I can’t bring you reviews of all of them, I have been busy testing quite a few of them. Again, I can’t share performance information with you just yet, but all the available previews are linked below.

So what’s so special about Z690 and why should you care? Put simply, this is Intel really stepping up to meet or beat what AMD are offering to their customers. AMD has had a lead with technologies like PCIe Gen 4, and now it looks like Intel will leap ahead to Gen 5. Of course, there are no consumer PCIe 5.0 devices just yet, but I have a strong suspicion Intel will be the first to the fight with their upcoming graphics cards. It would certainly make sense that they’d have a lead with their own technologies! Furthermore, I suspect we’ll see PCIe expansion cards for storage taking full advantage of the massively increased bandwidth this offers.

There’s support for DDR4, just like we have on the previous generations. However, manufacturers can build their motherboards to use the new DDR5 hardware instead. From what I’ve seen so far, more affordable models are using DDR4, while the more high-end boards are using DDR5, however, this is just an observation and not really a fixed rule. Furthermore, the two are not forwards/backwards compatible, so you will need new memory if purchasing a DDR5 board.

The chipset now also features integrated Intel WiFi 6E support, which can use the 6GHz band, and that means huge performance improvements for WiFi, especially for those with routers that use the new standards. However, we’re also seeing most brands step up for 2.5 GbE LAN or higher too, especially on the more gamer and enthusiast boards.

The chipset is designed to work with the new Intel UHD Graphics featuring Xe Architecture too. Allowing up to 5K60 HDR Video, and four simultaneous 4K60 displays. Pretty impressive, but of course, you’ll need to ensure you have the appropriate video I/O on the motherboard of your choosing too. We look forward to testing what else this architecture can do in the near future too.

Finally, you also get USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 and 2×2 support, allowing for 10Gbps and 20Gbps transfer speeds. However, this is pushed even further with support for Thunderbolt 4 technology on some motherboards too, allowing for truly next-gen transfer speeds.