Next-Gen AMD 700-Series “AM5” & Intel 800-Series “LGA 1851” Socket Motherboards Aiming Q3 2024 Launch

AMD & Intel motherboard partners are aiming for a Q3 2024 launch for the next-gen 700-series "AM5" & 800-series "LGA 1851" platforms.

Chinese board channel forums who have cited various motherboard partners & industry sources, report that the next major motherboard upgrade cycle will occur in Q3 2024 which is about a year away from now. Both AMD and Intel are said to introduce their latest chipsets which motherboard makers will utilize in next-gen products but AMD will be flexible based on the choices Intel makes since they aren't in a hurry which we will tell you why.

Starting with Intel, the company has its LGA 1700 socket which is featured on two generations of motherboards, the 600-series (Z690, H670, B660, H610) & the 700-series (Z790, B760, H710). The motherboards feature support for three generations of CPUs, the 12th Gen Alder Lake, 13th Gen Raptor Lake, and the recently launched 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs. Motherboard makers also slightly refreshed their Z790 lineup with new boards featuring the latest I/O capabilities such as WIFI7 and BT5.3.

However, Intel plans to make a major shift to a brand-new platform in 2024. The next-gen 800-series boards will utilize the LGA 1851 socket which will debut with the launch of Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs in 2H 2024. The 800-series family will include Z890, H860, and H810 motherboard products while also getting W880/Q870 chipsets for workstations and business products.

Based on previous information, the Intel Z890 platform is expected to feature up to 60 HSIO channels (26 CPU + 34 PCH while the B860 and H810 platforms will feature 44 and 32 HSIO channels, respectively. Intel's 800-series platform will also support up to DDR5-6400 memory natively and with 48 GB memory module compatibility. Besides that, WiFi 7 and 5 GbE are also going to be talking points as Intel brings them to consumers across all segments.

On the AMD camp, Team Red and its motherboard partners will introduce the new 700-series PCH family based on the same AM5 socket. AMD has committed to a 2025+ plan for its AM5 socket and the introduction of a new PCH doesn't mean that existing motherboards will get any less support than what they are getting now. The new PCH will be designed to offer new and improved features but as we have seen with AM4, the older chipsets will still retain compatibility with newer CPUs and may also get support for the same features through BIOS updates by motherboard manufacturers.

The 700-series PCH will be an update to the 600-series (X670, B650, A620) and debut alongside the next-gen AMD Ryzen 8000 "Granite Ridge" CPUs which will make use of the Zen 5-core architecture. It is reported that AMD is in no hurry to offer 700-series since 600-series is also good enough for its next-gen CPU lineup. Also, AMD has the upper hand over Intel with its current platform, offering a robust Gen5 (GPU/SSD) ecosystem so unless Intel makes massive upgrades with its 800-series, AMD might just launch the Ryzen 8000 series on 600-series boards first and offer 700-series down the line for users who want something extra.

It will also be interesting to see if AMD's higher-end 700-series AM5 motherboards retain the same dual PCH design as we saw on the X670 series or shift to a singular PCH design. The move to dual PCH (which are two B650 chipsets) was done to achieve higher I/O capabilities. AMD may design a new PCH that doesn't require two PCHs and incorporates all the extra capabilities on one die. We can expect to offer higher memory scaling capabilities through its motherboard partners while also delivering next-gen interfaces such as WIFI7, similar to Intel.

Both Intel and AMD next-gen platforms will debut around Q3 2024 which will be similar to 2022's AMD Ryzen 7000 (AM5 600-series) and Intel 13th Gen (LGA 1700 700-series) launch.